Mike Lazaridis is a famous Greek Canadian entrepreneur, business executive and philanthropist. He was born in Istanbul, Turkey on March 14th, 1961, and came to Canada at the age of 5, and was raised in Windsor, Ontario. As a child, Lazaridis was an overachiever. At the age of 12, he won a prize for reading every science book in the Windsor Public Library. He was captivated by science and how things worked; he and his friends spent hours in his basement building things such as rockets and radios. Mike Lazaridis is an Officer of the Order of Canada and Order of Ontario, was named Nation Builder of the Year in 2002 by the Globe and Mail, made the Time Top 100 List of Most Influential People in 2005. He was the founder and CEO of Research In Motion (RIM), which is known today as Blackberry.
Blackberry’s Beginnings
Mike Lazaridis founded RIM in 1984, while studying electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Waterloo. RIM was an electronics and computer science consulting business, that later focused on developing technology for the wireless transmission of data, such as email and text messages.
That year, Lazaridis responded to a request for proposal from General Motors to develop a network computer control display system. GM awarded RIM with a $600 000 contract. Lazaridis dropped out of Waterloo two months before his graduation to continue building his company.
In 1992, Jim Balsillie joined RIM as co-CEO. With
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