Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie have stepped down from their roles as co-CEOs of BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion (RIM). They have been replaced by Thorsten Heins, who has been appointed president and CEO, and also joins the RIM Board.

Lazaridis becomes vice-chair of RIM’s Board, and chair of the Board’s newly-created Innovation Committee. Balsillie remains a member of the Board, but will have no operational role.

The pair have paid the price for a disastrous couple of years, characterised by a lack of innovation, eroding market share and falling profits, culminating in the three-day outage last October that left millions of BlackBerry users without access to email and the web on their phones, with RIM offering a masterclass in how not to handle such a crisis. 

Following news of the shake-up, Lazaridis conceded that the move was needed, saying: “There comes a time in the growth of every successful company when the founders recognize the need to pass the baton to new leadership. Jim and I went to the Board and told them that we thought that time was now.” He added that his confidence in the company’s future was such that he intended to buy an additional $50m of the company’s shares. (Not hurting too much financially then – Ed.)

Balsillie concurred, saying: “I agree this is the right time to pass the baton to new leadership, and I have complete confidence in Thorsten, the management team and the company.”  

Heins joined RIM from Siemens Communications Group in December 2007 as senior vice president for hardware engineering, and became COO for product and sales in August 2011. He said RIM has been the victim of growing pains. “As with any company that has grown as fast as we have, there have been inevitable growing pains,” he said. “We have learned from those challenges and, I believe, we have and will become a stronger company as a result.” Heins added that the company is in the process of recruiting a new chief marketing officer.