News broke yesterday that Nokia and Microsoft will join forces in the mobile phone market in an attempt to:
regain ground lost to the iPhone and Android-based devices.
Let's try and look at this rationally.
So we have Nokia: a company who, 10 years ago, were the dominant player in their sector, only to be swept aside when they failed to adapt quickly enough when Apple and Google decided to disrupt the shit out of the mobile phone market and do stuff that was wildly different and much better than what anyone had done before.
And we have Microsoft, a company who, 10 years ago, were the dominant player in their sector, only to see their grip on the tech industry broken when Apple and Google decided to disrupt the shit out of the tech market, and do stuff that was wildly different and much better than what anyone had done before.
Worse, Nokia's CEO knows all this, and still decides to go ahead with it. Unbelievable.
To illustrate how doomed I think this move is, here's a passage from 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene. It's pretty self-explanatory.
The reality facing the Prussians in 1806 was simple: they had fallen fifty years behind the times. Their generals were old, and instead of responding to present circumstances, they were repeating formulas that had worked in the past. Their army moved slowly, and their soldiers were automatons on parade.
The Prussian generals had many signs to warn them of disaster: their army had not performed well in its recent engagements, a number of Prussian officers had preached reform, and, last but not least, they had ten years to study Napoleon - his innovative strategies and the speed and fluidity with which his armies converged on the enemy. Reality was staring them in the face, yet they chose to ignore it.
For further reading, here's another article by Robert Greene comparing Google to Napoleon.