because the BlackBerries...
because the BlackBerries were used by NASA, and they were using them to
communicate with the International Space Station.
Livingston: Fast-forward a little bit to when you came up with the idea for the
BlackBerry. You were in your basement—it seems like you have a thing for
basements!
Lazaridis: When you try to get away from it, the basement is a nice place to
hide.
All through this, I was always looking for value. I was trying to find,
“Where’s the value of wireless data?” Early on, we had realized that wireless
push email had some serious value. But it was really tricky to do. There was a lot
of work, a lot of trial and error, a lot of R&D that had to be accomplished and
invested in to actually get the system to work properly. To this day, the
BlackBerry is the only system that works well and is reliably secure under those
conditions.
Fifteen years ago, this was still a bit of a research project, and we were
spending a lot of time on that. But the product itself, its final form, was still too
unwieldy to be able to put in your pocket. That was our goal. We realized early
on that the function was there, but the value was limited by the packaging and
limitations of the technology of the day.
So we started working on this, and it was just about the time when my son
was born. I remember coming home, and my son had had a more difficult day,
and I had to take over. I remember just getting him to bed, and then I went
downstairs and got on the computer, and I put on some music and just started
writing. Three hours later, I had just put the finishing touches on what became
the plan for what eventually became the BlackBerry. Back then, it was called an
interactive pager—I coined the phrase “interactive pager.” Then what I did was
come up with five improvements to the wireless data networks that would allow
us to provide a reliable experience that was also power efficient. I came up with
the basic premise as to where the value was and what became the foundational
underpinnings of our technology for almost a decade after that point. As soon as
I sent it to the office, that’s when my son woke up.
That was a turning point, because we’ve used that document for years. It’s
still used by people here because it defines the essence of the BlackBerry experience,
and it has allowed us to remain true to that and really bring value to our
customers. It helped us stay away from the fads that really didn’t bring any
value and just made the product more complicated and more expensive and
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