Jumat, 03 Juni 2011

Worth Reading: "Stephen Elop's Nokia Adventure"


Nokia's alliance with Microsoft was a rumored but still highly unexpected shift of power within the smartphone field and the technology industry in general...but how did it all start? Yesterday, Bloomberg Businessweek published an interesting article that should answer at least part of that question. The beastly 7-page recollection of events centers around Stephen Elop, Nokia's recently appointed CEO and the pioneering force behind the partnership. We don't want to give any spoilers away, but we can at least give you this superbly written intro paragraph to get you hooked:

On a slushy morning in early March, Stephen Elop, a Canadian executive who built his résumé at U.S. technology companies, found himself in front of 2,000 Finns delivering a speech about failure. Six months earlier, Elop had been hired away from Microsoft (MSFT), where he oversaw the company's Office products, to lead Nokia (NOK), the world's largest manufacturer of mobile phones. At its peak, in 2002, it contributed 21 percent of all of Finland's corporate tax revenue, and its success over the past dozen years has fueled the nation's sense of possibility in the same way that General Motors (GM) once propelled the aspirations of the U.S. Elop's message to his employees in the factory town of Salo was that, despite the 450 million phones the company sold in 2010—402 million more than Apple (AAPL)—almost everything Nokia had done since 2007 was wrong.

The comparison between Nokia and GM is spot on and that intro is just excellent at setting the tone for the rest of the piece. If you want to take a peek behind the headlines of a truly groundbreaking transition, we highly recommend you read the article. You can find "Stephen Elop's Nokia Adventure" right here.

Source: Bloomberg Businessweek

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