NOKIA: RE-INVENTING AND RE-STRATEGIZING AS NECESSARY TO ASSURE CONTINUED GROWTH AND MARKET LEADERSHIP
There are many examples among the more successful companies in the world of the imagination, willingness to change, and application of sound management principles that allow companies to prosper across generations. When one states that many examples exist within the context of the hundreds of thousands of companies that have existed across generations, however, one begins to realize the relative rarity of this combination of entrepreneurial and managerial expertise and drive. The Boeing Company, while it was still based in Seattle in its early years between the First World War and the Second World War, resorted to designing and manufacturing furniture to generate the funds required to sustain its self until it could return to the pursuit of aircraft technology. Today, the Boeing Company, now based in Chicago, appears to be in the process of re-inventing itself again to distance itself to some extent from aircraft manufacturing because that industry is in the mature stage of its life cycle. Another company whose past history of re-intention and re-strategizing may not be as widely known as that of the Boeing Company is Nokia Corporation, which is headquartered in Espoo, Finland (Hoover's, Inc., 2003a).
Nokia began its corporate life in 1865 as a pulp and paper mill in Finland. Approximately 100 years later, the top management at Nokia realized that future growth required that the company expand its horizons beyond Finland. Consistent with the strategic thinking and orientation of that day, Nokia set its sights on becoming a conglomerate in Europe. As a company from Finland, however, Nokia at times found it difficult to get its case taken seriously in the larger countries (Hoover's, Inc., 2002d).
As a part of the company's new strategy, it began entering into a variety of alliances. The alliances did not always develop i...