Why Canada’s Blackberry should buy Tiktok ?
A visionary leader will have all the answers for what will happen next. After all, my research in leadership tells me that one of the 57 leadership attributes is called “insightful”. If I have to be more level headed and offer you a clear vision, it will be this year 2020, no ? After all, anything can happen in the western free market economy nowadays — especially if your title is President.
Leadership matters
Extracted from one of my papers — Leadership attributes by Gerstner and Day, 1994
Ok… back to my original topic (not digressing to my PhD thesis), the issues with Tiktok’s alleged security in data communication could be potentially solved by this acquisition from Blackberry Ltd
Blackberry Limited (NYSE: BB and TSE: BB), previously known as Research In Motion (a.k.a. RIM) had been offering the Blackberry devices — with the most reliable and secure messaging services (BBM) that we all liked. It was so good that U.S. President Barrack Obama himself had lobbied publicly to keep his Blackberry when he was elected back then; and not to mention how the former U.S. Senator and Secretary of State Hilary Clinton had also been given state-issued Blackberry devices. Blackberry announced its closure of its BBM messaging service in 2019 according to a Techcrunch story
The Rise and Fall of Research In Motion
The company however has faced the same setback as with many companies which stopped innovating. Youtube writer Dagogo Altraide (very talented curator) had curated a story called the rise and fall of Blackberry (a must watch programme) and it gives readers a good perspective about leadership.
Blackberry is of course a totally different company now from Research In Motion (it’s former name) with a focus on software security, enterprise IoT and even Smart City technologies.
Blackberry is now trading as BB at NYSE and TSE with a market capitalization of around USD 2.63 Billion and Tiktok probably has a very high valuation (Note: I have no data on this) based on the various metrics and reported number of users, viewers and apps downloads. However, with the imminent embargo from doing businesses in India and now in USA , this valuation could go down the drain. It would only make sense for a secure communications platform company such as Blackberry to be the white knight if Microsoft’s bid for the short dance and lip-sync app startup fell through.
The case for Blackberry is obvious, it has not been a consumer play for a long time and this leveraged bid could give Blackberry the access to millions of consumer customers, big data, media, ad revenues, and potentially a nice license royalty fee from the use of Blackberry’s secure communication technologies protected by its vast portfolio of patents
But hey, I am no Blackberry CEO like Mr. John Chen who was the guru that found Sybase and led the company to record-breaking profits every year before its acquisition by SAP . I am simply offering my advice in leadership where it makes sense. Innovation is simply not the average lip service for senior management, consultants, founders or board members. It needs to be practiced every year, every quarter and be validated by others, especially those that are from outside — crossing boundaries, perhaps to new battlefields. (Pun intended: perhaps Smart Home like what Remotec offers)
Leaders must not be complacent and should be “open minded” when working collaboratively with other people’s own world view. ByteDance’s Tiktok mindshare, Blackberry’s vast portfolio of patented technologies and the US-Sino trade war had offered me a totally different view of ethics, performance metrics and shareholders’ value — arghh.. and not to mention a totally perplexed view of world leadership.