Can new leadership revive Nokia’s fortunes

Business students covering strategic or synoptic units are strongly advised to keep track of a small number of firms where the need for strategic change results in a change of business leadership. By building in-depth knowledge of the strategic issues faced by these case studies, a well-researched student can bring real authority to their exam essays, making their answers stand out from the crowd.

The recent change in leadership at Nokia might be a good one for students to follow…

Lots of coverage (including this useful background article) on the appointment of Canadian-born Stephen Elop as the new CEO of Nokia. Elop was previously President of Microsoft’s Business Division, and before that CEO of Macromedia (now owned by Adobe).

I like Rory Cellan-Jones’ short video about the new appointment too.

Nokia, despite being the world’s leading mobile handset manufacturer, is facing intense competition from the likes of Samsung and Apple, whose products seem to be generating much more excitement currently. Lots of strategic challenges for Elop to address - and in the full glare of the world’s media too!

Definitely a story to watch, and there will be plenty of multi-media resources around over the next few months to help students research and follow his progress.