The curse of agility: The Nokia Corporation and the loss of market dominance in mobile phones, 2003–2013

Juha-Antti Lamberg; Sandra Lubinaitė; Jari Ojala; Henrikki Tikkanen

doi:10.1080/00076791.2019.1593964

The curse of agility: The Nokia Corporation and the loss of market dominance in mobile phones, 2003–2013

Juha-Antti Lamberg, Sandra Lubinaitė, Jari Ojala, Henrikki Tikkanen

Department of Marketing

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › Scientific › peer-review

30 Citations (Scopus)

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Abstract

We investigate how and why the Nokia Corporation failed to develop a successful strategic response to the threats of Apple and Google in the smartphone business and instead worsened its situation through several badly timed decisions. We identify key choices in technology and organisational design that jointly constituted sufficient cause for the abandonment of the mobile phone business. By focusing on choices instead of attributes (e.g. fear or hubris), we make progress in strategic failure research and simultaneously emphasise the strength of oral history methods and the philosophy of history as fruitful starting points for such an inquiry.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	574-605
Number of pages	32
Journal	Business History
Volume	63
Issue number	4
Early online date	6 Jun 2019
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/00076791.2019.1593964
Publication status	Published - 19 May 2021
MoE publication type	A1 Journal article-refereed

Keywords

strategy
technology management
decision-making
business history
oral history
Nokia

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10.1080/00076791.2019.1593964Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

The curse of agility The Nokia Corporation and the loss of market dominance in mobile phones 2003 2013Final published version, 2.23 MBLicence: CC BY-NC-ND

Cite this

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The curse of agility: The Nokia Corporation and the loss of market dominance in mobile phones, 2003–2013

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Keywords

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