“I don’t want anyone to have to step out of the 21st Century when they are using Kaiser Permanente.” Bernard Tyson at Techonomy 2015
Bernard Tyson of Kaiser Permanente and John Chen of Blackberry are two of the most amazing CEOs in the world. Tyson leads and is expanding one of the most important and innovative companies in the U.S. healthcare system. (He was a star of a dinner Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick moderated at Davos on the future of healthcare–article about that here.) Chen, for his part, has had an eminent and highly successful career, especially in transforming, growing and selling Sybase (SAP bought it a few years ago.) Now he is bluntly and unemotionally tackling one of the most challenging tasks in business–rescuscitating Blackberry. It’s a company many think of as no longer relevant, but he is proving the doubters wrong. Now Blackberry is moving away from its traditional phone business and becoming more of a software and security company. And Lord knows we need better security. As for the phones, he’s now selling Androids with extreme security features, something people increasingly will need. They spoke together at Techonomy 2015 in Half Moon Bay.