Arrogance is an insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes from believing that you are better, smarter, or more important than other people. I'm just reading about Jim Balsillie now (Life After RIM), and wonder if people here, invested in POET, would feel comfortable to have someone leading POET with such a documented personality trait?
Food for thought people.
.....he was feared as well as respected, according to several former RIM executives. Those who tried to challenge his strongly held views on the rapidly changing smartphone industry were swiftly, and sometimes mercilessly, put in their place. He was, in many ways, the driven, self-assured salesman at the centre of what many considered an institutional arrogance at RIM – the Canadian company that came from nowhere, usurped much larger rivals and provided a must-have product to the world’s biggest and most successful wireless operators.
Former executives and people close to RIM’s board say this attitude, combined with an increasingly dysfunctional co-CEO structure that was split between Mr. Balsillie and Mr. Lazaridis, contributed to a broken decision-making process that slowed RIM’s response to Apple Inc.’s unstoppable iPhone and grew tense and unworkable as RIM’s competitive situation deteriorated. As RIM’s market share dissipated, sources say the relationship between Messrs. Lazaridis and Balsillie worsened further – and the two men who once shared an office and used to listen to each other’s voice-mail messages were barely on speaking terms. (Mr. Balsillie didn’t respond to numerous requests for comment.)
“Part of the challenge was RIM started to develop arrogance, and that arrogance came from success – and I’m going to say that impacted Jim a lot more than Mike,” says a person close to RIM’s board both before and after the company’s IPO. “In time, he stopped listening. Because you’re a billionaire, and you know more than everybody else, so you like to hear yourself speak but not like to listen or take any feedback. And the way to deal with any competitive pressure or suggestion, is just to say ‘You don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. We’re BlackBerry. We’re RIM. Do you not know who we are?’ ... That arrogance, I think, really, really hurt the company. And it hurt the company in the very end.”
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/in-motion-jim-balsillies-life-after-rim/article8709333/
