
Nokia: Where it all went wrong, by it's former CEO - tim333
http://www.zdnet.com/nokia-where-it-all-went-wrong-by-the-man-who-made-it-the-worlds-biggest-mobile-company-7000023046/
======
nabla9
One of the biggest mistakes was American style stock options in Nokia and the
way it was implemented (to make the VP level management rich and leave others
with nothing).

What do ambitious people grown in Nordic culture do when they become rich and
financially independent? They either leave to start their own business or
pursue other interests with passion. Those who did stay were not the cream of
the crop and lost their ambition.

------
tim333
It seems much of the problem was not being as good as Apple/Google/Microsoft
at OS development which they needed after the iPhone came out eg.:

[Vanjoki] "was in charge of its MeeGo smartphone OS with 2,000 people serving
under him, but still Google managed to get better results with some 500
Android engineers."

~~~
devx
Maybe it was an execution problem, too, but I think it was mainly a strategic
problem - i.e. the leadership didn't _want_ to try and replace Symbian very
quickly. They still thought Symbian could be made into an iOS/Android
competitor if they just put touch on it. They thought that was the only real
problem with Symbian - not having touch. When in fact there are many other
major problems with it, such as being very hard to develop for, and having a
big problem from an image point of view (nobody thought Symbian could ever be
as good as iOS or Android for touch).

Olli just refuses to take responsibility. He kept dismissing both the iPhone
and the adoption of Android for its phones for _4 years_ after the iPhone came
out. That's a ridiculous amount of time in today's tech world.

> In the end, timing is all about intuition.

Saying he needed intuition, is like saying any advanced technology is like
"magic". He didn't need intuition to "get it". He just needed to understand
the disruption innovation theory and to have read Innovator's Dilemma
(seriously, how can any CEO ignore the teachings of that book 10 years after
it came out? It should be every large company's BIBLE. If they don't really
get it, they should be reading it again every single year until they do).

~~~
tim333
Ta for the reply. I'll have to read Innovator's Dilemma one day.

~~~
devx
I strongly recommend reading Blue Ocean Strategy, too. Innovator's Dilemma
focuses on technology mostly, but Blue Ocean is a similar theory that applies
to _any_ industry.

They are pretty much the same theory, though. They are not that "new", just
much better researched by these two books, and more fleshed out. Peter Drucker
was actually talking about this strategy in his book Innovation and
Entrepreneurship decades ago, although while it was obvious he "got it"
himself, his book doesn't do a great job of explaining it to the reader in a
way that he can understand it very well and then go and apply it. But I think
Innovator's Dilemma and Blue Ocean Strategy authors were inspired by that to
research their theories.

Innovator's Solution sequel is also pretty great, if you want to read it after
Innovator's Dilemma (especially for the integration/disintegration insights).

But really these books and these theories have taught me so much about how
technology companies can succeed or fail, and I think they are so critical to
a CEO, especially a large company's CEO, that if I was a board's Chairman, I
would not hire a CEO that doesn't have a deep understanding of the disruption
innovation theory.

Oh, and btw, Steve Jobs was a _big fan_ of Innovator's Dilemma (it's mentioned
somewhere), and I remember thinking years ago that Steve Jobs is the CEO that
is applying the most the disruptive innovation/Blue Ocean theory, out of all
existing CEOs in the world at the time.

~~~
tim333
Ta. I had a read of the Amazon reviews at any rate. It takes so long to read
an actual book! I'm supposed to be launching a business that's kind of Blue
Ocean so we'll see how that goes.

