Roger Martin: Defensive Idiot ⇥

Roger Martin is on the board of RIM. In this candid interview with The Globe and Mail, he notes where he sees problems with the company. But it’s clear that he has no idea of what needs to be done to improve their situation. Instead, he defends what RIM has done for the past five years.

Still, he has little patience with calls to be more like Apple. He points out that Apple dismissed its own co-founder Steve Jobs in the mid-1980s in favour of an outside marketing specialist, only to bring Mr. Jobs back, laying the foundation for its current exalted status.

“They ask ‘Why can’t you be more like Apple?’ So we should go bankrupt and fire our founders and bring in a moron? That’s what we should do?” Mr. Martin says.

While RIM isn’t going bankrupt, they’re not financially healthy and are on a downward trajectory. They didn’t fire their founders, but they left anyway, putting in charge someone who has vowed to follow the current roadmap.

RIM is broken.