RIM Needs to Hire a Visionary

Although Nokia (NOK) and Microsoft (MSFT) might only be able to come in a not-so-strong No. 3 to Google's (GOOG) Android and Apple in the smartphone wars, you have to give these companies credit for an aggressive marketing push, what looks to be smart cross-platform integration of Windows and a pretty solid phone in the new Lumia.

Although it's not like either company dictates the future like Apple does, at least they see it and are acting accordingly.

What RIM needed to do was hire a true visionary, a thinking man, somebody like Reed Hastings, to run the show. Let him dream up the next big idea and let Heins count beans with the CFO, manage the supply chain and discuss maternity-leave policy with HR.

It baffles me when I consider the similar, yet drastically different situations RIM and Netflix find themselves in.

Netflix has a visionary, yet it refuses to hire a strong COO to run the business and keep the big-picture guy in check. RIM has a guy who can probably do a halfway decent job of running the day-to-day (anything would be an improvement), yet it refuses to bring somebody in with even an ounce of vision.

RIM should be throwing truckloads of loonies and toonies at the leading minds who work for companies like Apple and Google.

The company might even want to call Hastings and see what he thinks about the prospects of living in southern Ontario.

At the time of publication, Pendola owned shares of NOK.

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