20 years ago in the sleepy Canadian city of Waterloo, engineer Mike Lazaridis founded a small enterprise called Research In Motion (RIM). With the goal of devising innovative products and solutions for large corporations, RIM started a revolution and quickly became a pioneer in the age of Information Technology.

By the mid 1990s, RIM anticipated wireless devices as the next big thing in computing and the need for wireless e-mail. RIM's 'radical' idea was an integrated system bundled with service from a wireless carrier.

After several years of planning, research and development, RIM incorporated additional features to its then-unnamed wireless prototype. This device could access an extensive range of applications including email, telephone, intranet, internet and SMS.

And so the BlackBerry® was born - allowing users to easily manage all personal, work-related information and communications from a single, integrated hand-held device, virtually anytime, anywhere.

Today it has changed the way people communicate.