.
Mike Lazaridis (48) is a success business man. Nowadays, the print and internet media stated him as a very important person and influential to the world society.

The reason: He is the founder of BlackBerry. Together with many home page of social network, BlackBerry able to change the way to communicate of world citizens.

BlackBerry is handheld wireless communication equipment with a capability as a cellular telephone, e-mail facility, SMS, facsimile, internet surf, camera, etc.

BlackBerry – with the unique system and server technology, always able connect to the internet. So, with the BlackBerry you will able to communicate and sending/received data easily …… everywhere!

Lazaridis is a citizen of Waterloo, Canada. He is born in Istanbul, Turkey. The parent coming from Greek, they move to Canada when Lazaridis still five years old.

Years 1966 Lazaridis stay at Windsor, Ontario. His talent has shown when he school at Windsor. He spends more of his time at the library. When he is 12 years old, Lazaridis win an honor of Windsor Public Library for his reputation to read all of scientific books at that library.

In the high school, his interest on electronic facilitated when he meet with many good teacher. In every interview he always pointed his high school teachers as his best motivator.

Actually, his creation to develop one system of electronic equipment (like cellular phone), computer and wireless, is coming from the dream of his high school teachers there.

Year 1979, Lazaridis going to Waterloo University and he choose Electrical Engineering faculty for computer science. And, he got a contract worthy USD. 500,000 from General Motors (GM) to develop a display control for computer network. With that money and he borrow from his parent USD. 15,000 he make a company named Research in Motion (RIM). He left the university two months before graduated.

RIM main core of business is in the field barcode technology for film. Slowly but sure, RIM jump in to wireless business and, year 1999 introducing BlackBerry.

Things we can learn from Lazaridis, even success, he still humble and not easy to satisfy. He still effort to learn and always do a research. No wonder that he is not “only” as a technology expert, more than that he also expert on management, marketing and make a strategy to expand his product around the world. Amazing!

pictures taken from: Symetry Magazine