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The Decline and Fall of Nokia
The book deals with the decline and fall of the Nokia company.
- GenresBusinessNonfiction
305 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2014
12 people are currently reading
160 people want to read
About the author
David J. Cord
3 books4 followersDavid J. Cord spent fifteen years in the investment industry, as salesman, administrator and hedge fund manager.He has been a contributor to the Helsinki Times newspaper since its foundation, reporting on business and authoring its most popular column. He has also written for publishers as diverse as European CEO and the Finnish Foreign Ministry.
His first book, Mohamed 2.0: Disruption Manifesto, was published in 2012. Called ‘simply brilliant’ by Kauppalehti, it tells the story of Mohamed El-Fatatry and the rise and fall of the online social network Muxlim.
Dead Romans is his second book. It is made up of three semi-independent stories and is set in and around Ephesus in 166 AD as the Roman Emperor Lucius Verus leads his army back from the Parthian War.
He is currently writing his third book.
An American by birth, David married a Finn and moved to Finland in 2005. He lives in Helsinki with his beautiful wife Niina and his globe-trotting dog Orion.
His first book, Mohamed 2.0: Disruption Manifesto, was published in 2012. Called ‘simply brilliant’ by Kauppalehti, it tells the story of Mohamed El-Fatatry and the rise and fall of the online social network Muxlim.
Dead Romans is his second book. It is made up of three semi-independent stories and is set in and around Ephesus in 166 AD as the Roman Emperor Lucius Verus leads his army back from the Parthian War.
He is currently writing his third book.
An American by birth, David married a Finn and moved to Finland in 2005. He lives in Helsinki with his beautiful wife Niina and his globe-trotting dog Orion.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 5, 2014
The cover of "The decline and fall of Nokia" is quite revealing in that it lists alternative working titles that author David J Cord had in mind for the title, rather like a set of working notes. Nowhere in the list however is the "RISE and fall of Nokia" to be seen. In this lies what I feel to be a slight missed opportunity by the author for a more complete and interesting book, the chance to tell the full story of the phenomenal rise of Nokia to be then followed by its steep descent and spectacular fall. Whilst Cord does allude to key historical edpisodes in the early Nokia success story, his telling essentially begins in 2006 with the convergence of devices and services against a metaphorical portrait of a great classical battle raging between the players in the mobile phone industry for market share. In setting the emotional tone for the rest of the book, Cord introduces the combatants as Godlike mythical warriors engaged in mortal duelling much like Hector and Achilles before the gates of Troy (one wonders if this metaphor is subconsciously connected to the much-touted idea of Stephen Elop as Microsoft's Trojan Horse inside the gates of Nokia - An idea the author refutes, by the way). The mood thereafter is therefore set as emotional / reflective alluding to the decline of Nokia as akin to the vanquishing of a great civilization. Very grand indeed, considering the reality inside the Powerpoint Palace in Espoo was more likely to be besuited middle managers occupying each other in meaningless meetings than brave Trojan warriors fighting to the last. As Nokia's Citadel burned, the defenders were more likely to be watering the roses in the garden than manning the battlements.
Neverthless, this is the best "outsider" book yet on Nokia. Cord is an impressive writer, journalist and commentator. His column in the English-language "Helsinki Times" is a weekly treat in an otherwise bland digest of parochial local news of the "cat stuck in tree" variety. Like all books written by journalists, he narrates in a clear, flowing, lucid style. Simon Carswell's "Anglo Republic" telling the story of the demise and collapse of Anglo Irish Bank springs to mind. Cord didn't have what would be described as unfettered access to the top echelons of Nokia in writing the book - no interviews are featured with Ollila, Kallasvuo or Elop for instance - but he has put together a good account based on interviews with former Mid-level executives as well as ordinary engineers. His occasional quotation of anonymous sources hint at a Deepthroat source perhaps relatively high up.
The book brings out the thin line between success and failure in a rapidly evolving industry based on emergent technology, much as in human psychological makeup the veil between great genius and madness is often wafer thin. Thus Nokia were "too far ahead of their time", brilliant at products but lost the focus on consumers, neglected North America at the expense of focusing on building market share in cheaper phones in emerging markets, and so on. A key warning for growing companies in a fast-moving emergent technology environment is presented several times in the book, and this is Nokia's organizational culture as a factor contributing to its demise. As it grew, Nokia had to evolve from a decentralized, unstructured, improvisational culture and organization to a bureaucratic, layered, process driven one. Whilst in the early days of this certain elements of the the matrix structure yielded results and benefits, at the end its lumbering organization was a factor in its undoing. In fact, this is a cultural tendency which may be connected to Nokia's Finnish identity, where there is a tendency at the heart of most big Finnish companies to be obsessed with organizational hierarchy, bureaucracy and structure, allied to which is the creation of useless Corporate functions which cause them to lose sight of their customers and "vanish up their own backsides" in a torrent of Corporate Bullshit Bingo. One simply cannot envision Apple's HQ in California as being layered with suit-and-tie wearing Middle managers giving Powerpoint Presentations to each other all day about how good we are and how we should do this and we should do that (where "we" = everybody else but me). Cord makes the point strongly that Nokia's organizational structure and culture was such that talent and creativity were wasted. Worth quoting as an example of Corporate doublespeak gone haywire is how Nokia's Public relations Department chose to announce the redundancy of 285 people at its Salo, Finland plant - " Nokia plans to develop Salo Plant operating mode to further increase production speed and efficiency for a growing smartphone market". This may seem utterly laughable, but watchers of Finnish Corporate Gobbeldygook press releases will recognize it well; it must be something they teach in PR school here.
Closely tied with this is failure of leadership and non-inspirational management style - Kallasvuo for example comes across as being the high tech Industries' equivilent of David Moyes. Stephen Elop's much maligned "burning platform" memo is afforded less the inspiration of the Gettysburg address and more the menace and indignity of Robspierre's "impure men .. heads must roll" speech to the National Assembly in Revolutionary Paris ... shortly before his own head rolled.
As the book settles in and gathers pace Cord displays not only a deep knowledge of the Telecommunications Industry, but also a keen business acumen littered with the commercial insights of a successful investor.
The fate of Nokia lingers as an open wound in the collective National psyche of Finland, and Finns yearn for the return of a Nokia-like National champion much as Helen yearned for the return of Hector from his duel with Achilles. But Hector never returned; his foe proved too strong for him and he was slain. Paradise has been lost, perhaps never to be re-found. Finland, with its noble tradition of high quality engineering and design, holds out great promise for technology start-up's (many established by former Nokia employees & suppliers), as the recent success of gaming companies illustrates, but whether a colossus employing hundreds of thousands on the scale of Nokia will ever again arise is highly questionable. In pondering this, Finns must look deeply into the nature of their political system and National economy to examine the effects an overbearing State sector, high taxation, a culture of entitlement, militant Unionization and Immigration and education policy have on innovation and entrepeneurship in the 21st Century. They should also examine the philosophies, structures and strategies pursued by big Finnish Corporations and the effect of Finnish National characteristics & traits on these, in doing so isolating which aspects of "Finnishness" are good to impart and which may be more negative.
Was it an anomaly that a Nokia ever arose in the first place from Finland ? Cord could have shed more light on this by exploring the rise of Nokia deeper. This in no way though takes away from his masterful telling of its decline and fall. The decline and fall of Nokia is, as Cord rightfully points out, one of the most important business stories of Modern times. It is a story that remains living and evolving however; the re-structured Nokia, whose core businesses of Networks, patents and mapping is showing great promise may once again surprise us by adding to this a game-changing technology, much as from the original Nokia of tyres, rubber boots and paper came forth a Global innovator in Mobile phones. Don't bet against it. And as to Microsoft, their excursion into devices with the Windows operating system remains a story with an unforseeable end. The victors of Troy did not enjoy the spoils of their own conquest before their empire also crumbled. Give it a few years and we may see another interesting tale from Mr Cord.
Neverthless, this is the best "outsider" book yet on Nokia. Cord is an impressive writer, journalist and commentator. His column in the English-language "Helsinki Times" is a weekly treat in an otherwise bland digest of parochial local news of the "cat stuck in tree" variety. Like all books written by journalists, he narrates in a clear, flowing, lucid style. Simon Carswell's "Anglo Republic" telling the story of the demise and collapse of Anglo Irish Bank springs to mind. Cord didn't have what would be described as unfettered access to the top echelons of Nokia in writing the book - no interviews are featured with Ollila, Kallasvuo or Elop for instance - but he has put together a good account based on interviews with former Mid-level executives as well as ordinary engineers. His occasional quotation of anonymous sources hint at a Deepthroat source perhaps relatively high up.
The book brings out the thin line between success and failure in a rapidly evolving industry based on emergent technology, much as in human psychological makeup the veil between great genius and madness is often wafer thin. Thus Nokia were "too far ahead of their time", brilliant at products but lost the focus on consumers, neglected North America at the expense of focusing on building market share in cheaper phones in emerging markets, and so on. A key warning for growing companies in a fast-moving emergent technology environment is presented several times in the book, and this is Nokia's organizational culture as a factor contributing to its demise. As it grew, Nokia had to evolve from a decentralized, unstructured, improvisational culture and organization to a bureaucratic, layered, process driven one. Whilst in the early days of this certain elements of the the matrix structure yielded results and benefits, at the end its lumbering organization was a factor in its undoing. In fact, this is a cultural tendency which may be connected to Nokia's Finnish identity, where there is a tendency at the heart of most big Finnish companies to be obsessed with organizational hierarchy, bureaucracy and structure, allied to which is the creation of useless Corporate functions which cause them to lose sight of their customers and "vanish up their own backsides" in a torrent of Corporate Bullshit Bingo. One simply cannot envision Apple's HQ in California as being layered with suit-and-tie wearing Middle managers giving Powerpoint Presentations to each other all day about how good we are and how we should do this and we should do that (where "we" = everybody else but me). Cord makes the point strongly that Nokia's organizational structure and culture was such that talent and creativity were wasted. Worth quoting as an example of Corporate doublespeak gone haywire is how Nokia's Public relations Department chose to announce the redundancy of 285 people at its Salo, Finland plant - " Nokia plans to develop Salo Plant operating mode to further increase production speed and efficiency for a growing smartphone market". This may seem utterly laughable, but watchers of Finnish Corporate Gobbeldygook press releases will recognize it well; it must be something they teach in PR school here.
Closely tied with this is failure of leadership and non-inspirational management style - Kallasvuo for example comes across as being the high tech Industries' equivilent of David Moyes. Stephen Elop's much maligned "burning platform" memo is afforded less the inspiration of the Gettysburg address and more the menace and indignity of Robspierre's "impure men .. heads must roll" speech to the National Assembly in Revolutionary Paris ... shortly before his own head rolled.
As the book settles in and gathers pace Cord displays not only a deep knowledge of the Telecommunications Industry, but also a keen business acumen littered with the commercial insights of a successful investor.
The fate of Nokia lingers as an open wound in the collective National psyche of Finland, and Finns yearn for the return of a Nokia-like National champion much as Helen yearned for the return of Hector from his duel with Achilles. But Hector never returned; his foe proved too strong for him and he was slain. Paradise has been lost, perhaps never to be re-found. Finland, with its noble tradition of high quality engineering and design, holds out great promise for technology start-up's (many established by former Nokia employees & suppliers), as the recent success of gaming companies illustrates, but whether a colossus employing hundreds of thousands on the scale of Nokia will ever again arise is highly questionable. In pondering this, Finns must look deeply into the nature of their political system and National economy to examine the effects an overbearing State sector, high taxation, a culture of entitlement, militant Unionization and Immigration and education policy have on innovation and entrepeneurship in the 21st Century. They should also examine the philosophies, structures and strategies pursued by big Finnish Corporations and the effect of Finnish National characteristics & traits on these, in doing so isolating which aspects of "Finnishness" are good to impart and which may be more negative.
Was it an anomaly that a Nokia ever arose in the first place from Finland ? Cord could have shed more light on this by exploring the rise of Nokia deeper. This in no way though takes away from his masterful telling of its decline and fall. The decline and fall of Nokia is, as Cord rightfully points out, one of the most important business stories of Modern times. It is a story that remains living and evolving however; the re-structured Nokia, whose core businesses of Networks, patents and mapping is showing great promise may once again surprise us by adding to this a game-changing technology, much as from the original Nokia of tyres, rubber boots and paper came forth a Global innovator in Mobile phones. Don't bet against it. And as to Microsoft, their excursion into devices with the Windows operating system remains a story with an unforseeable end. The victors of Troy did not enjoy the spoils of their own conquest before their empire also crumbled. Give it a few years and we may see another interesting tale from Mr Cord.
June 3, 2014
An ambitious and very comprehensive history of Nokia's decline and fall in the mobile phone business. The book is based on number of interviews of especially Nokia's employees. Thus, it could be called a "semi-inside story". From its numerous details one can find distinct reasons of the fall of this earlier no 1 phonemaker. One comment tells the whole story in a nutshell: "We had a touchscreen smartphone with one button years before Apple's iPhone....We had an iPad to sell almost decade before the iPad...Forty five minutes before we were supposed to start (the production of the "iPad") management told us to stop everything...Was there an bug in the software or flaw in the hardware or did a survey reveal consumers hated it? No, the management were incompetent!" Nokia was a company of excellent engineers which developed products to kill them. Early 2000's Nokias organisation was changed to a static bank type organisation since the management believed that the market was saturated. This was a big mistake since the coming of G3 kept the branch continuously dynamic. Maybe there was also arrogance since the management did not react the launching of iPhone but stayed in Symbian operating system unsuitable for capacitive touchscreens. And the board made two failed appointments: Kallasvuo and Elop. The final fall happened when Elop first told that the Symbian is a bad operating system after which operators almost stopped ordering Nokia's smartphones. And finally Nokia made an exclusive contract to use ONLY Microsoft's WP system with practically no ecosystem. After these steps the drastic fall of market share of smartphones and the big economical losses began. This book is written in an intelligent way with an excellent language. It was a joy of reading it even if the content made a finn so sad.
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