We Were the Only Ones to See It
Nokia’s executives were alone in the industry in perceiving the full potential of mobile phones as a mass consumer product. This chapter describes and analyzes how this perceptive framing emerged over time and why other firms (the leading incumbents) did not develop a comparable framing. Conceptually, the key points are that innovative winning strategies result from clear, lucid, and determined strategic opportunism, not from grand plans or a sudden awakening to a new reality. They evolve and develop incrementally and often iteratively. Nor are the most important innovations necessarily technological: Nokia grew globally very rapidly in that period by understanding the needs of new, recently licensed mobile service operators and how different their business model needs were from traditional incumbent telecoms firms.