[5] He received a Bachelor of Commerce degree from Trinity College at the University of Toronto in 1984, where he was also a member of the Zeta Psi fraternity.

After graduating from Harvard Business School, Balsillie was an executive vice-president and chief financial officer of technology for Cambridge, Ontario-based design and construction services company Sutherland-Schultz.

The twin-CEO structure of Lazaridis and Balsillie eventually became cumbersome and inhibited their competition with the Apple iPhone and Google's Android devices.

[10] In May 2010, almost immediately after the OSC sanctions expired, Balsillie was reappointed to the board, in spite of strong shareholder objections, and notwithstanding RIM's earlier public representations that the roles of chairman and CEO were separated.

By then, the iPhone from Apple had launched and cornered the mobile apps market, and some investors called for resignations from the executive suite.

[9] On January 22, 2012, Balsillie and co-CEO Mike Lazaridis resigned from their positions and were replaced by RIM Chief Operating Officer Thorsten Heins.

[11] The decline was steep for RIM: in the span of five years, the company had gone from Canada's most valuable property, surpassing even the biggest bank, to a tenth of its former value.

[9] Balsillie commercialised 44,000 patents during his career at RIM, and claims he is "the largest commercial IP protagonist in the history of [Canada].

"[5] Balsillie has been involved in at least three attempts to buy a National Hockey League franchise with the overt intention of moving it to Hamilton, Ontario.

On June 15, 2009, Judge Redfield T. Baum rejected Balsillie's bid to purchase the Coyotes from the bankruptcy trustee.

Judge Baum's ruling stated that he did not have the power to force the team to move and that Balsillie's June 29 deadline did not give the court enough time to resolve all the issues in the case.

Balsillie has contributed resources and time to organizations such as Waterloo Children's Museum, Grand River Hospital, the Canadian Olympic Foundation and others.

[21] In October 2022, he published an op-ed in The Globe and Mail critical of the Trudeau government for proposing the Digital Charter Implementation Act 2022 (Bill C-27), writing that it "normalizes and expands surveillance and treats privacy as an obstacle to corporate profits, not as a fundamental human right or even a right to effective consumer protection.

[24] When asked about potential political aspirations, Balsillie stated that "I’d be the worst politician in the world—if I don’t like people, I can’t hide it".