Greg Aziz is a digital genius and serial entrepreneur who has been involved with some of the most ground-breaking digital transformations in recent years. He spearheaded AOL’s transformation into a global powerhouse, transforming it from a dial-up service to one of the world’s leading broadband providers. Greg also created RIM’s BlackBerry mobile phone business and helped navigate it through the early stages of its successful growth phase.
Achievements
As the co-founder and chief strategic officer of Nexopia, he is responsible for driving innovation and delivering results. Greg Aziz´s role at Nexopia is to oversee the product, company culture and design while making sure development is on track to meet client needs.
Additionally, he regularly supervises project teams of up to 45 engineers across the world. He was one of the first employees at AOL’s Innovation Group where he led a team that created AOL’s first advertising platform by developing an integration between Adsense, Doubleclick ad network and emerging technologies such as AJAX, Flash and RSS. Greg Aziz explains that this became the foundation for future innovations.
These, such as AOL SearchBeta, Instant Messenger search integration with Google Talk and Google Desktop Search Beta. Before AOL, he was the chief operating officer and vice president at RIM’s Research in Motion (RIM). Here, Greg Aziz led the global business from scratch and successfully transitioned the company’s technology to a handset player with a near 90% market share.
The transition followed an initial $250 million investment that was quickly followed by another $960 million investment and further acquisitions as Greg Aziz recalls. The growth strategy of the company included developing an internet-ready architecture, an established channel program to drive demand, huge distribution channels across key markets including enterprise, retail and government customers, booming sales within emerging markets (Brazil, India and China) as well as aggressive entry into European markets.