RIM PlayBook
This week the RIM PlayBook tablet computer was launched. It is probably a decent machine with some compelling design features but it has received some scathing reviews.
Tablet makers are currently in a frenzied catch-up mode to Apple. They are trying to duplicate the stunning success of the iPad. If a tablet manufacturer is to be successful in this fight they have to come up with some truly innovative ideas that create real buzz, as opposed to say, ridicule.
One thing that stuck out with the RIM PlayBook is its lack of an email program. Not including an email program in a tablet computer is comparable to launching a new car without windows that roll down or a radio that turns on.
When I read about that deficiency I scratched my head and chuckled. What were they thinking? Were they actually trying to make the front page of The Onion, or perhaps there is some structural deficiency in their design thinking.
I think it might be a good time to explore some aspects of the RIM model and provide some cultural context.
RIM is located in the small southern Ontario city of Waterloo. Waterloo is about one and a half hours drive west of Toronto.
Southern Ontario is a part of Canada that some of us view as the natural economic, educational and cultural heartland of English Canada. This smug feeling of superiority the rest of Canada naturally detests.
Waterloo is usually portrayed as the science and technological hub of Canada. RIM has its headquarters there, as do other successful tech companies such as OpenText.
RIM grew out of work done at the University of Waterloo, which is one of Canada’s prime research universities. This university is renowned for the excellence of its research in many fields including math, computer science and engineering. It has the reputation of being young, smart and ambitious.
Similar to how Stanford is the reason why Silicon Valley is where it is, the Waterloo technology hub exists because of its proximity to the University of Waterloo.
If some of the smartest people are in Waterloo and RIM is the wunderkind of Canadian technology, then why would they launch a tablet with such obvious and laughable deficiencies?
No one would claim that they aren’t smart up in Waterloo. But maybe being smart is not enough, or perhaps they are smart but in a particularly unhelpful way.
I have some history with Waterloo but I admit they I have little direct knowledge of Waterloo’s current culture except having driving through it several times and stopping on occasion at its impressive Perimeter Institute. I am sure that many nice people live and work in Waterloo.
Waterloo is an attractive place, but in a white-bread, buttoned-down, suburban kind of way. If you are looking for gritty urban living of a kind found in Brooklyn, East-end London or Istanbul, you would be well-advised to look elsewhere.
The nearby city of Kitchener seems to have more historical buildings than Waterloo and has a grungier, more working class appeal. Kitchener is renovating some of its old factories to attract the hipster crowd. This appeal to sustainability and historical preservation seems to be working out well and is creating substantial interest in the business community.
Yet, Waterloo is stuck in a corporate-campus type setting in which truly urban attractions and experiences are less prevalent.
There is something just a hit nerdy about Waterloo. It has traditionally attracted the pocket-protector set: those with more skills in mathematics than in art or socially disruptive thinking.
Maybe RIM and its PlayBook suffers from this approach to technology.
RIM has the reputation being a darling of corporate types. Its main competitive advantage is the interoperability of its devices within secure corporate data networks. To many, this is a key advantage.
But to those outside the corporate or business realm this is much less of a compelling feature. In fact, it works against being seen as ‘cool.’
Data security is a good thing but it is not the only thing. Security should not trump all other concerns. Usability, openness and overall innovation must also be important design considerations.
Many view the recent global recession as somehow engineered or caused by the excesses of western capitalism. For a company that hopes to design devices with some broad consumer appeal, being allied with multinationals and their preference for secure data is not necessarily an advantageous position.
There are only so many corporate types in the world, whereas there are huge numbers of non-corporate types. It is this broader-based consumer market that the likes of Apple and Google are in a much better position to exploit.
RIM is left on the sidelines serving a privileged corporate culture. RIM is further marginalized by its obscure Canadian origins, in a world where Canadian multinationals are not seen as being particularly progressive or innovative.
Compare the engineering-driven culture of Waterloo with that of Silicon Valley in California.
One of the reasons that the Bay Area is such a great success is that the engineer-driven culture of Silicon Valley is balanced by the artistic anarchism and free-spirit of nearby San Francisco and Berkeley. It is the land both of Stanford and its straight A students, but also of the Black Panthers and of environmental activism.
There is something electric in the air of the Bay Area, which seems missing in a place like Waterloo. Waterloo appears to have all the nerdiness of Silicon Valley but without the inspiring counterpoint of free-love and of new ways of organizing society.
This makes Waterloo an attractive place of employment for some but not a sympathetic place to live as a free-spirited artist or even as an open-source programmer.
If one has some interest is those kinds of alternative lifestyles then one should explore the downtown districts of Toronto, or even Hamilton, rather than Waterloo.
Exploration of social alternatives is necessary to come to a point where real innovation is possible. Innovation and social conformity do not always make great bedfellows.
RIM and Waterloo have the reputation of being steady and reliable places in which to produce conventional work. However, what is now required is unconventional work.
If RIM is to become a success in fields such as the design of consumer-friendly devices, it must ditch its joined-at-the-hip connection to the corporate world and explore its inner anarchist.
RIM, in short, must either innovate or die.
