The Real Lessons From the Fates of BlackBerry and Nokia

In all the recent coverage about the fall of once-mighty Blackberry, something was missing. The press and pundits were all correct that the original smartphone leader paid a heavy price for its continued failure to respond to the iPhone disruption. But former cell phone king Nokia also made a remarkably similar series of blunders over the same time frame. Could it be that management at two sophisticated technology companies was that inept? Or is there another way to explain the relentless erosion of two of the world’s most valuable business franchises?

The strategic choices the two companies should have made are fairly obvious: The iPhone proved instantly that consumers wanted not just better phones but well-designed mobile Internet devices. More interesting, then, are the organizational design choices the companies should have made to maximize the odds of discovering and executing a successful strategy in the face of a rapidly transforming industry.