Stephen Elop: Former Nokia CEO

Stephen Elop was born on December 31, 1963, in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. Stephen graduated second in his class in 1986 with a degree in computer engineering and management from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. A significant involvement he had in his college days was helping to lay out 22 kilometers of Ethernet cable around campus to establish one of the first Internet networks in Canada.

Through the course of his professional career he held significant positions such as director of consulting for Lotus Development Corporation, CIO for Boston Chicken, CEO for Macromedia, and COO of Juniper Networks.  Stephen worked for Microsoft from January 2008 to September 2010 as head of the Business Division, responsible for the Microsoft Office and Microsoft Dynamics. 

In September 2010 Nokia announced that Stephen would become its CEO.  One of the significance of this event was he would become the first non-Finnish director in Nokia’s history. Nokia was not in good shape and was looking for a CEO to shake things up and lead the company back to its glory days.

The most defining move Stephen made was to embrace the Windows Phone of Microsoft. In-house mobile operating systems would be phased out. This was designed to get a better share of the smartphone market.  Instead of using Android Stephen wanted to differentiate Nokia by using Windows.

Stephen also oversaw the plan to lay off around 11,000 employees in 2011. Another 10,000 was announced for layoff in June 2012. Several facilities was also due for closure. In May 2013 shareholders were pushing Stephen for results.  Figures showed that there wasn’t any significant improvement in sales of smartphones that would ensure the company’s future. In fact some were of the opinion that Nokia had already lost the smartphone race to Samsung and Apple.

It was announced on September 3, 2013 that Microsoft would buy Nokia’s mobile phone and devices business for $7.2 billion. Stephen would step down as Nokia’s CEO and become vice president of the Devices and Services business unit of Microsoft.

Since Stephen’s watch, stock value of Nokia had dropped by 85% as of June 2013. Clearly Stephen wasn’t the CEO savior Nokia was looking for. In the end though selling the mobile unit to Microsoft which has financial muscle may have been the best decision made.