Krize v Nokii

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/07/22/nokia_manifesto_risku/

(...) “I have an E71 business phone, and I noticed that when the phone was locked it popped up a dialog that obscured the notifications. I asked, ‘Can you make it 5mm smaller, please?’. They investigated the code in the phone and said ‘We can’t find the piece of code that could shift it up 5mm.’ They said, ‘There’s 20 million lines of code in the phone – it’s impossible.’”

Elsewhere, Risku explains, the executives responsible for the Ovi strategy – and he supports the potential of services - didn’t know what was going on.

Ovi development has been outsourced to two London marketing and design agencies. “The development was made externally, but the governance was in Nokia. People who owned the concept, like Niklas Savander, don’t understand the mobile web – and it’s not like the web. It was disastrous for all designers at Nokia who know about the mobile web.” (...)

Another example of bureaucracy is inertia. Nokia needs to accelerate its processes in several ways, urges Risku. He cites two interesting examples.

“When the people and designers and product specialists get their own strategy it's first of all, a bit old. There’s a four month delay, so the strategy reflects the business situation four months ago. Then it takes some months to start new projects. During that time, you can't ramp down the old projects.

In the case of Maps following the €8bn Navteq acquisition, nothing happened for six months. Then Google made Maps free. More recently, it has made turn-by-turn navigation free. In another case, the bureaucracy implemented processes carelessly.

“One day, one of those people responsible for directing User Experience at Symbian came in and said - you can’t work anymore with the old process any more. Everyone asked what that new process is - and she didn't say what it was. So 200 people were doing nothing for six months.

"A strategy is devised, then it's delayed a bit, then delayed a bit more... then it's already old." (...)

"Since 2006, Nokia brand development has been a playground for marketing people and some fashion designers based in Soho, London. At the same time external marketing offices from London have been creating campaigns and Web visuals for Nokia basically without no relevant definition or guidance from Nokia's side. Nokia brand directors, under SVPs and VPs, are from Coca-Cola, McDonalds, Disney and Nike, from companies without any connection to technology, gadgets, functional products or 'rocket science' visions - without competence, visions and customer understanding." (...)

For Risku, Compaq import Mary McDowell, who has overseen the Enterprise division for almost a decade, would be one of the first to go. I recall the Hildon strategy from 2001 to 2003 - never publicly disclosed - which would have combined push email with much more sophisticated devices than anything RIM or Microsoft could offer at the time. Blackberry cleaned up the corporate messaging space with much more primitive solutions – that worked.

Risku remembers the next push into enterprise.

“We went to the US with the E-series. Mary McDowell worked with that, but nothing happened, and it ramped down. So there is no Enterprise Solutions anymore. Nothing is managed. McDowell is so high level she doesn't know about the content and the substance.”

McDowell was also chief development strategist. It was one of the most important positions at Nokia. But nothing happened in development in the company. (...)

The strongest criticism is reserved for the son of the former Finnish President, Marko Ahtisaari, chief design director. It’s an example of nepotism that Risku calls “business socialism”.

“Ahtisaari has destroyed Nokia design – it’s a real disaster. If you put Mr Beckham or Prince Charles into BP, nobody would understand why you'd done that. Ahtisaari is a name.” (...)