In order to truly understand a company you have to get intimate with its history and employees. Nokia is a Finnish based company, and that fact alone has dictated their design, marketing, and business practices from its inception.
What makes Nokia so Finnish, BMW so German, Samsung so Korean, and Sony so Japanese? If these companies were founded in other parts of the world I guarantee you they wouldn’t be as iconic as they are today.
There is a Nokia employee out there, Phil Schwarzmann, who has a great blog called “Finland for Thoughtâ€
The byline reads: “I’m an American who’s been living in Finland for four years. I started this blog to address some of the political, cultural, and current event issues in Finland and the United States. I am a strong advocate of liberty, individuality, equality, and tolerance. Enjoy!â€
I like that. I like that a lot.
Reading about Finland from the perspective of an American living there has been rather interesting. It’s caused my curiosity level of this Nordic country to peak.
What do they eat? How social are they? What holidays do they celebrate? These are the questions I ended up asking myself, and later looking up on Google, to silence that little voice in the back of my head who always wants more input.
I’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to understanding Finland and maybe one day I can use, and expand, that knowledge of the region if I ever get to see Nokia HQ in Espoo.
One thing every country has unique to themselves are proverbs. I’ve found a website with a ton of them, from Finland of course, and I’m going to be starting a new segment, every Monday and Thursday of the week.
To put it simply, I’ll share a Finnish proverb with you, twice a week, tell you what I think about it, and see how that little tidbit of information has shaped Nokia today.
Why am I doing this? Like I previously mentioned, you can’t fully appreciate a company until you understand what geographical and social elements contributed to the way we know them as today.
Tomorrow is going to be the first installment, what should I call this little idea of mine?
I’m leaning towards "Nokia: Made in Finland"