Research in Motion - Managing Explosive Growth

RESEARCH IN MOTION: MANAGING EXPLOSIVE GROWTH
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According to Mazutis (2008) Research in Motion is a company whose line of business is the manufacture of BlackBerry smart phone devices. Despite having an excellent team of engineers who were delivering award-winning products, the company was growing explosively and was facing fierce competition from other Smartphone producers in the global marketplace. The managers needed to address the research and development plans of the company, in order to formulate a strategy in dealing with the expansion and competition problems. Having doubled revenue in the year 2007, there was need to double the number of software engineers but the company was facing scarcity both in space and talent.
Research in Motion had a traditional growth strategy that involved sourcing its labor force from the local talent pool through recruitment of new graduates from Waterloo University, through referrals by employees and by making acquisition of small companies with interest in technology. It had the challenge of acquiring one thousand four hundred new software developers to keep up with the pace in research and development as well as integrating them into the company culture, which was free of bureaucracy and the main reason for the low employee turnover rate in the company. The culture had created a dynamic and nice environment that engineers liked to work in.
To nurture the culture, the company had to remain centered in Waterloo but the current issues relating to space posed a big challenge to this idea. Research in motion had attracted and utilized most of the talent in waterloo and therefore had no option than to venture in the global software developers` market which was difficult given the high competition. If the option to hire from other places in the market was considered, then it posed the difficulty of the perception by the engineers who would opt for a more attractive and cosmopolitan area such as the Silicon Valley in Los Angeles as opposed to Waterloo, Ontario. Furthermore, there was the challenge shortage in physical space at Waterloo.
Considering the fact that Research in Motion was very specific on the type of engineers it expected to hire, getting the right employees was a major challenge. As Dayna had put it, the company was not just after growing its own talent since hiring young graduates would need patience before they start performing at a higher level. The company needed some seasoned software engineers to lead various teams in innovation. Such exceptional software developers are scarce in the highly dynamic wireless com...