Transforming Nokia: The Power of Paranoid Optimism to Lead through Colossal Change  (English, Paperback, Risto Siilasmaa)

In 2008, Nokia owned half of the global smartphone market. By 2012—four years after Apple introduced the iPhone—the company synonymous with mobile phones had lost more than 90 percent of its value and was rumored to be on the brink of bankruptcy. That’s when Risto Siilasmaa took the helm and put his concept of “paranoid optimism” to the test. Nothing less than the existence of this 150-year-old company was at stake. In Transforming Nokia, Siilasmaa tells the gripping inside story of Nokia’s near-death experience and its astonishing recovery. Why couldn’t Nokia compete against Apple and Android? The answer was every leader’s nightmare: Nokia was a victim of its own success. Leaders had become complacent and resistant to change, and the innovative and risk-taking culture that had once propelled Nokia to greatness was all but gone. Siilasmaa explains how he and his team tapped the power of paranoid optimism to revive and reinvent the struggling company—and he reveals how anyone can use his methods to rise above any business challenge, in any industry. Bold and often unconventional, his battle-tested strategies include: building and banking on trust-based relationships at every level of your company, seeking out bad news, embracing emotions, and learning to be brave enough to dream big. Nokia is now among the top players in the global digital communications infrastructure market. The value of its business increased more than 20 times between 2012 and 2016. Tellingly, fewer than one percent of the company’s current 100,000 employees carried a Nokia badge in 2012.