Blackberry: Lessons Learned from One of Canada’s Most Riveting Technology Companies | June 9, 2015

The Empire Club of Canada Presents:

A Pioneer Series Event of the Empire Club of Canada featuring Jim Balsillie, Jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff With Blackberry: Lessons Learned from One of Canada’s Most Riveting Technology Companies

Losing the Signal: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of BlackBerry

JACQUIE McNISH is a senior writer with The Globe and Mail and previously The Wall Street Journal. She has won six National Newspaper Awards for her groundbreaking investigations into some of the biggest business stories of the past three decades. She is a regular host on Canadian business news station BNN and an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. She has authored three bestselling books: The Big Score: Robert Friedland, Inco and the Voisey's Bay Hustle; Wrong Way: The Fall of Conrad Black,winner of the 2005 National Business Book Award, and The Third Rail: Confronting our Pension Failures, which was co authored by Jim Leech. In his 2005 New York Times review of Wrong Way, author Bryan Burrough praised her as, long one of Canada's best business writers. She lives in Toronto with her husband and two sons.

SEAN SILCOFF is an award winning business writer with The Globe and Mail. During his seventeen year career, he has covered just about every area of business, from agriculture to the credit crisis, toys to airplane manufacturing. He led the paper's coverage of the rise and fall of BlackBerry and many of the other major business stories of the decade, including the takeover battle for telecom giant BCE Inc., the contentious merger between brewers Molson and Coors, and the near death struggles of plane and train manufacturer Bombardier Inc. He has won a National Newspaper Award, an Aerospace Journalist of the Year Award and the Edward Goff Penny Memorial Prize for Young Canadian Journalists. He lives in the Gatineau Hills near Ottawa with his wife and three children.

JIM BALSILLIE, B.Comm. Toronto, FCA Toronto, MBA Harvard, currently chairs the Board of Directors of Sustainable Development Technology Canada. He was appointed to this role by the Government of Canada in 2013. He is a co founder and former co CEO of Research In Motion, BlackBerry, and founder of the Centre for International Governance Innovation, CIGI. He is also the founder of the Balsillie School of International Affairs, BSIA; Arctic Research Foundation, and co founder of Communitech. He was the private sector representative on the UN Secretary General's High Panel for Sustainability. His awards include: Mobile World Congress Lifetime Achievement Award, India's Priyadarshni Academy Global Award, Time Magazine World's 100 Most Influential People, three times Barron's list of World's Top CEOs and once CNBC's list of Worst CEOs.

Speakers:

Jim Balsillie, Chair of the Board of Directors of Sustainable Development Technology Canada

Jacquie McNish, Senior Writer, The Globe and Mail

Sean Silcoff, Business Writer, The Globe and Mail

*The content presented is free of charge but please note that the Empire Club of Canada retains copyright. Neither the speeches themselves nor any part of their content may be used for any purpose other than personal interest or research without the explicit permission of the Empire Club of Canada.*

*Views and Opinions Expressed Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the speakers or panelists are those of the speakers or panelists and do not necessarily reflect or represent the official views and opinions, policy or position held by The Empire Club of Canada.*