Nokia’s Burning Platform Memo (2011)
Nokia's made   institutional mistakes that doomed Nokia phones before hiring Elop. (I was there).<p>In a sense Nokia was (organizationally) victim of its own success. During the dumb phone and feature phone era Nokia did everything better than others.  Everything from the supply chain management, to the phone design and manufacturing worked so well. Why would you sideline leaders and organizations who build all that and wanted to build on that.<p>When Netflix made the decision to move from mail-based rental to streaming, they did not allow leaders involved in rental business to any meetings involving the company future planning. It's one of the best organizational decisions ever made.<p>Nokia had multiple choices to stay in game at the beginning. Adopt Android and be like Samsung. Create a new internal Linux based computing platform. Instead, Nokia allowed more senior leaders Symbian/Feature phone teams to interfere and sabotage in multiple big and small ways because their teams still made all the money. As a result,  the response to Apple   and Android  was constant internal reorganization and failed American style compensation structure that caused talent to leave the company, not new stuff.