This week’s launching point: 

The company formerly known as Research In Motion nearly killed itself by focusing on a tablet device when its greatest strength (now atrophied) is smartphones. Last week, the new Blackberry Q10 was announced. I was prepared to say “too little, too late,” but the reviews are glowing, and the more I think about it, the more impressed I am by the traits and behaviors exhibited by new CEO Thorsten Heins: 

Perseverance: Its stock price is down more than 90 percent from its 2008 highs. On the heels of a spectacularly damaging tablet release, under new leadership, and under the threat of death (quite literally), Blackberry is releasing what is possibly its most impressive product ever. Are you persevering in the face of difficult obstacles?

Creativity: There new features in the new Blackberry that iPhones and Android devices do not have. There are innovations and inventions. The Q10 evolves the functionality of a smartphone. In the face of immense pressure, chatter and the circling of vultures directly overhead, RIM created. Are you creating?

Focus: Heins, the new CEO, was handed a list of 2,500 ongoing projects on his first day on the job. He focused everyone on a single product. RIM had 10 manufacturing partners when he arrived. He cut seven of them. Heins reoriented the company around its greatest strength, the smartphone. Are you focused on your greatest strength? 

I don’t know if RIM will survive, but the chances are a lot better today they were a month ago. 

If a Canadian consumer electronics company on the bring of extinction can do this under these conditions, what can’t you do?