The immediate goal of the company seems to be to find a way to grow in terms of its R&D department by increasing the number of engineers employed. This is needed to keep up to pace with the fast growth in its sales which continually requires innovation. There is also the measure of research spending as a proportion of sales which is an important figure in the industry. The paper performs a SWOT analysis with regards to this question of rapid growth.
First off, the company has some strengths it can bank on (SWOT Analysis). It boasts one of the best internal cultures in the industry with its employees giving rave reviews about the way the company handles its employees. It was also voted one of the best employers in Canada (Beamish). This will help in attracting new talent away from competitors to the R&D department at RIM as part of the company’s growth measures. Another internal strength is that relative to some of its competitors like Google and Microsoft, the company is in a better geographically diversified position which may help in its efforts to court new talent in new facilities set up by the company. Another of the important inner strengths of the company relates to its consistent popularity in the e-mail section of its market which has been able to maintain its place. That could be used as a launching point for further innovation, stressing this advantage of the company as well as its large executive customer base in the US.
The company has many internal weaknesses to its growth plans though (SWOT Analysis). RIM has a policy of getting fresh graduates through its co-op program and then slowly developing them and inculcating in them the RIM culture (Beamish). This approach is unfeasible if it wants to grow rapidly now. The company also has the tendency to rely too much on local talent from the area of its main facility and the adjoining places. Its standard reserve available at Waterloo is slowly withering away as well and it will need to go outside of it to get a larger number of fresh engineers. This in turn poses another important problem. The company’s main facility is already overcrowded with the company founder famously joking about the parking problem there on national television. The company is going to find it very difficult to keep the nearly 1400 new employees it needs at Waterloo (Beamish). If they are somehow hired, they would have to be inculcated with the RIM culture faster than the usual crop of employees if that element of the company is to be retained. These new recruits also have to be experienced professionals and ready to start innovating since RIM wants rapid development to stay high in the market which is going to be s problem since most good, experienced engineers won’t be unemployed or very easily lured.
The company can bank on some promising opportunities, however (SWOT Analysis). If it decides to court new engineers from various countries to its home facility, it will benefit from the status of Canada as one of the best countries to live in from the point of standards of living and stability. The Canadian dollar is also very strong, allowing many of these engineers from developing countries to support families back home (Beamish). This will attract new and qualified employees. To take further advantage of this, RIM could embark on Symbian like global recruitment waves where new recruits are chosen, made to go through an assessment test, and then a grueling boot camp before they enter the firm (Beamish). This will allow larger numbers from different countries to be recruited and also inculcated with the RIM culture at the boot camp which is conducive to the company’s needs. In this regard, partnerships could be established with major research institutions in China and India which would add to the pool of Waterloo graduates the company banks on. Two more external opportunities for the rapid growth include acquisition of small companies to apply intellectual property and experience engineers and to try and get the workers being laid off by Motorola and other firms to join RIM (Beamish). This would bring more experienced engineers to the company. One more thing the company can bank upon is the growing amount of business in the world which will make its market in terms of the executive class rise. This presents an opportunity for the company to advertise Blackberry’s popularity among the business class and the security feature of its emails which will allow it to capture a greater percentage of this growing market than its competitors.
The company also needs to be wary of some external threats with regard to its growth plans (SWOT Analysis). Google and Apple are taking advantage of the talent pool available in their respective areas and may be able to get better engineers into their R&D departments leading to better innovation. RIM needs to react soon to this or it may get left behind in the fast-moving industry (Beamish). Major competitors are also accessing RIM’s talent pool at Waterloo, recognizing it as one of the best in the world which may further diminish the supply for the company at a time when it needs to grow in terms of personnel. There is also the ever-present demon of industry growth and rapid innovation which requires nurturing of R&D as fast as possible for the company’s long-term survival in an industry that is not kind to laggards. Considering also the rapid advancement of the industry with products such as the I-phone and the mobile series marketed by Nokia. This is further elucidated by the drop in near monopolistic status Blackberry once used to enjoy in the market. Thus this growing competition is a threat to the company that can potentially take away its profit margins if innovation is not brought on a regular basis.
Works Cited
Beamish, Paul. “Research in Motion Managing Explosive Growth.” Harvard Business Publishing. Harvard Business Publishing. 2009. Web.
“SWOT Analysis.” MSH. Management Sciences for Health and United Nations Children’s Fund. 2009. Web.