Thorsten Heins, the 54-year-old chief executive officer of Research In Motion (RIMM) talks in this Mashable piece about how his company “is not leaving the consumer business.”

My gut reaction upon reading that: It doesn’t matter. The consumer business is leaving you.

In the Age of the Platform, you can either make it easy or difficult for people to embrace your platform and products. Offer carrots and/or sticks. Be prepared when those don’t work–or work as expected.

Just don’t think that top-down decisions rule the day. Today, it’s decidedly not about controlling the environment and the ecosystem. In a very real sense, they control you.