Meet RIM’s new CEO, Thorsten Heins  

RIM has posted a video interview of their new CEO, Thorsten Heins:

My favorite part:

We’ve learned a lot about execution… never lose this innovation spirit, but also make sure that once we say the product is defined, that we move decisively into execution mode and get the product done in good quality, on time, and also at good cost.

More internally from a process perspective, I think we need to get a bit more discipline with our own processes. We are great innovative company, but sometimes we innovate too much while we are building a product. So I want to spend more time on prototyping, on exploring, on research and development, while we are building product on a separate stream.

The arrogance of this man is almost comical, but that’s not much of a departure from RIM’s past executives. The craziest thing in this video comes out of the fact that Heins constantly suggests that RIM’s biggest issues are either external or caused by poor internal process. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking he is wrong there. Process issues and external factors are seductive excuses for rationalizing failure, and if you ask a failed startup founder what he should have done differently, you would get approximately the same speech. I hope Heins doesn’t actually believe what he is saying publicly, because, if he does, RIM is in for some tough lessons.

Hat tip Daring Fireball