Suicide at RIM, Nokia, Radio Shack or Best Buy?

As I noted back in May here at TheStreet, Best Buy May Have Already Found Its New CEO. Here's a follow-up question for the BBY Board: What in the world are you waiting for?

You can read my article to learn more about Stephen Gillett, but, in a nutshell, he is a Silicon Valley guy, not a retail lifer. And he is not a "seasoned executive." He is, however, the type of person Best Buy needs as its next CEO. He's thinks like a tech guy. He never would have made the bonehead moves Ron Johnson made upon taking over at JCP.

He is well regarded. Best Buy must think highly of him. Gillett, named executive vice president and president of Best Buy Digital and global marketing and strategy in March 2012, already heads up a growing laundry list of crucial areas. It seems that, on some level, he simply lacks the official title of president and CEO. Why hire somebody else who could, in effect, trigger yet another transition Best Buy absolutely does not need?

RIM and Nokia

Survival at RIM and Nokia also starts at the top.

While RIM chose to hire the uninspiring Thorsten Heins from within, Nokia stepped out and grabbed a non-Fin, Stephen Elop from Microsoft(MSFT) . Elop's moment of truth should come in the months after Ryan Seacrest rings in 2013.

Nokia made its choice, it got gutsy on us and can't look back. Frankly, if it fails, I would not pile on the company. It made the necessary changes: It blew out management in relatively quick fashion, dumped the Symbian platform and partnered with Microsoft. You really cannot ask for much more given the depths to which the company fell.

RIM, meantime, went from two CEOs who refused to acknowledge the company's problems to one living in an equally abhorrent state of misleading denial. If I was a member of RIM's board, I would have told Heins not to not enter headquarters again unless it's over my dead body. Why? This pathetic comment:

There's nothing wrong with the company.