Proposal for a "plan B" Nokia is a recipe for disaster

February 15, 2011-10: 28

A group of shareholders of Nokia sent a public letter with a suggested "plan B" for the company that was developing with the Microsoft deal, CEO Stephen Elop and commit essentially the company strategy, go-it-alone. On paper, looks pretty. In real life, would rush to yesterday, not a path to tomorrow.

The following two tips, taken from the Group's public letter, are the core of what I believe will save the company:

Return the company to a strategy that aims for high growth and high profit margins through innovation and overwhelming products with unrivaled user experience.

Maintain ownership and control of software of Nokia products. The software is where innovation, differentiation and value to shareholders more easily can be created.

To this end, the Group suggests doing away with the Microsoft deal and have a Windows Phone 7 arrangement to focus only on the North American market, standardize on MeeGo smartphone platform, prolonging the life of Symbian, get rid of the leadership team, and essentially doing better overall software development work.

In the ideal world, these are all very smart steps. But the Group ignores one basic fact: Nokia has already tried all this--and failed. MeeGo has been the company's Symbian smartphone platform was slated for a longer life and software development was in-house.

Nokia is not able to do all this, and that is why they are looking for a new direction. What the Group wants to Nokia to do is simple to say, and at this point impossible to do. It would take years and years, not by Nokia. Needs something today, why has signed the agreement with Microsoft.

Change is difficult, but only companies willing to accept their failures will learn from them and go on a new path to success. Perhaps the most obvious example of this technology is IBM, which before was shocked by the death of the mainframe business, then made his bet on PC and go south for it as well. It has rebuilt itself essentially as services, technology and business consulting and succeeded wildly.

Nokia Elop was smart enough to recognize the company needed to go in a new direction dramatically. The proposal "plan B" would relegate the company once again to make the mistakes of his past.