Nice read if you’re into corporate history. This article explains how Nokia’s former CEO Jorma Ollila transformed Nokia and how today, current CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo is carrying the torch.
Nokia’s background is marked by reinvention, opportunism, technical expertise and occasional disaster. It has had more comebacks than Elvis, inspiring even the normally dry Martti Haikio, author of a three-volume history of Nokia, to write that the company’s tale was "on the one hand security, clarity and sustainability. On the other hand it encompasses human weaknesses such as inexperience, prejudice and dreams."
Kallasvuo enters a modest meeting room at Nokia’s pristine but somewhat sparse glass, steel and pale-wood headquarters in Espoo, near Helsinki. He prefers not to talk about Nokia’s past, though he has been witness to Nokia’s incredible history during his 25 years at the company.
It might be that while Ollila was on magazine covers, Kallasvuo was the crucial member of the team that created the Nokia of today. In 1993 Kallasvuo had a hand in deciding to break out results from Nokia’s individual business units. This made plain that its mobile phone business was growing rapidly but being dragged down by the group’s other operations.
One fund manager, Laurence Solomon, met Kallasvuo, looked at the numbers, declared them "the biggest thing ever" and bought all the Nokia stock he could. It was a seminal moment.
Source: LA Times