Tero Ojanperä, who has been with Nokia for more than 20 years, is finally leaving the company. We say finally because frankly, we have no idea what he’s been doing for the past few years. In September 2009 he was profiled by Fast Company and he described his job as doing nothing more than partying with celebrities to try and get them to offer their content on the Ovi Music Store, which as of today doesn’t even exist. Even Stephen Elop, CEO of Nokia, made note of Tero’s many titles in the press release that formerly announced his resignation, effective on the last day of this month: “While at Nokia, Tero made significant contributions through his role as Chief Technology Officer, Chief Strategy Officer, Head of Research, and most recently as Executive Vice President of Services.” All roles he’s had since 2006.
So … is that it? Can Nokia finally rid itself of a guy who has had more jobs in the past 5 years than a struggling musician? Nope. Tero is now the head of the Vision+ investment fund, which plans to “provide support to developers and entrepreneurs when they plan to introduce the best visions and product concepts into global and local markets.” How large is this fund? Tero doesn’t say. As a percentage, how large is Nokia’s stake in this fund? Tero doesn’t say. He does mention however that the primary goal of this fund is to make sure awesome apps are made for “Nokia’s ecosystem”, which is just another way of saying “Windows Phone”.
Think of Vision+ as the iFund, but handled by someone who has no prior experience with investing in companies, and has a habit of starting projects that fail to take off because they’re either poorly executed or hit the market far too late for anyone to pay attention. In other words, Tero is continuing the Nokia way of working.