[Interest] Semi-OT: What could / should Elop / Nokia have done differently?

[K. Frank]

Hi Atlant!

Thank you for some of the history and your insightful
comments.

On Fri, Jun 22, 2012 at 7:41 AM, Atlant Schmidt
<aschmidt at dekaresearch.com> wrote:
> Dear all:
>
>  In my opinion (informed by some time spent actually
>  working for Nokia), Nokia's biggest problem was that
>  their early, stunning success in mobile phones led them
>  to develop a culture which was risk-averse. They were
>  the largest manufacturer of mobile phones in the world
>  so they would routinely conclude that what they were
>  doing must be maximally right and any other approach
>  would be less right.
>
>  There were literally *THOUSANDS* of middle-level managers
>  at Nokia who all had the authority to say "NO!" to new
>  things and almost no one who was willing to say "Yes!".
>  E.g.,
> ...
>  "Look, we're the largest mobile phone manufacturer in
>  the world so we know what we're doing. If you don't
>  like it, you can always go elsewhere."
>
>  So eventually, I did. So did many other talented folks.
>  So, eventually, did the customers.

Not that I know anything about the internals
of Nokia, but this all sounds very plausible.

There have been plenty of big, successful companies
that have run into trouble in the way you described.

>  Nokia became unable to make revolutionary changes or even
>  fast evolutionary changes. This was true even when the
>  iPhone meteor hit the Nokia planet and the dinosaurs
>  started having trouble breathing. In an interview I
>  watched, Executive VP Mary McDowell characterized the
>  iPhone as "a toy". Not only could the leadership not
>  react to the iPhone, they couldn't even see the magnitude
>  of the impact. Then the Android comet came by as well...
> ...
>  I believe Elop was brought in with the deliberate purpose
>  of blowing up that culture of being entirely risk-averse
>  and unwilling to change.**
> ...

I'll buy that.

I always surmised that Elop was brought in to be a dramatic
remedy to a significant problem.  Presumably Nokia leadership,
or the board, or whatever recognized real problems and was
attempting to address them.

> ...
>  Now we've all speculated on whether Elop was just inept
>  or a deliberate Trojan Horse, planted by Microsoft. Up
>  until the cancellation of Meltemi (the Maemo/MeeGo child
>  that was going to replace S40 in featurephones), I was
>  willing to entertain the idea that Elop was just totally
>  inept. But the cancellation of Meltemi, the last known
>  internal competitor in the "could be a smartphone" space
>  has driven me to accept that Elop's motives are not pure.
>
>  What happens now?
>
>  Well, Microsoft just Osborned Nokia again with their
>  WinPhone8 announcement of non-support for everything Nokia
>  has recently sold and everything they'll attempt to sell
>  for the next few months. So at this point, I'd guess that
>  Nokia burns through their cash and fails as a free-standing
>  business. I don't think there's *ANYTHING* they can do to
>  stop that now. No Android "Hail Mary!" phone, no waiting
>  for Win8, nothing.

Well, it sounds like you've answered my second question:
What would you do if you were brought in now to replace
Elop?  Not to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like
you are saying you wouldn't take the job, or you'd take it
and go play golf, or something, or you'd take it and try to
sell the patent portfolio.  But you view it as too late to save
Nokia, so there's no point in trying.

That's fair.  (Maybe right, maybe wrong, but fair.)

But what about my first question?  Suppose you had been
brought in instead of Elop to lead Nokia back then.  If I
understand you correctly, you're saying that Nokia was
already in a deep hole.  What path would you have taken
that you think could have worked?  (Or do you think Nokia
was already beyond salvation even at that point?)

> ...
>  I think Apple should buy them for Nokia's IP portfolio.
>  Apple won't do that, of course, because Apple would have
>  a hard time getting regulatory approval. But they should.
>
>  Instead, as Nokia's stock becomes worthless, I think they
>  will simply fall into Microsoft's hands, almost by default.
>  And the world will be a much poorer place for that; Nokia
>  was a fine, moral corporation that made a good product for
>  a while. If they'd let me run the place instead of Elop,
>  they'd probably still be doing so.

So what would you have done, and what would be Nokia's
current recipe for success / relevancy?

>                             Atlant
>
>
> *  Never mind that Symbian still built with (no exaggeration!)
>   more than 7,000 warning messages from the compiler. Those
>   warnings couldn't mean anything, right?

(Ouch!)

Thanks for your thoughts and your contribution to this little
parlor game.

Best.


K. Frank