Category: Finland

You’re Invited to a Finnish Tea Party

My profile of Finland’s version of the Tea Party has just been published in Bloomberg Businessweek.

In early August, Timo Soini, the foreign minister of Finland, mounts a stage at the convention center in the town of Turku. The occasion is celebratory, marking the 20th anniversary of the formation of the Finns, the conservative party he heads, and his entrance into government for the first time following elections in April.

Soini is a big man, with the girth and mirth of a television sitcom dad and a gift for the colorful phrase. His speeches are usually easygoing affairs, loaded with crowd-pleasing mockery of Finland’s participation in the bailout of Europe’s weak southern economies. But on this occasion his imagery is stark. He describes his party’s performance in the election as “a hard, diamondlike achievement” and likens the tough decisions he’s since had to make as facing “the cosmic cold.”

In the past 20 years, Soini has led the Finns from an insignificant also-ran to the country’s second-largest party, now governing in coalition with two other conservative parties, including Prime Minister Juha Sipila’s Centre Party. Soini has done so by being the voice of opposition. And yet, just three months after taking office, he’s being forced to explain why Finland agreed to sign on to a new €86 billion ($96 billion) bailout for Greece.

Read the rest.

Is Windows Nokia’s Lifeline?

My story on Nokia’s platform troubles is up on Time.

Nokia’s Stephen Elop certainly has a way with words. In February, in what might have been the most brutally honest corporate memo in decades, the recently installed CEO compared his company to an oil worker trapped on a burning drilling rig, facing a terrible choice. “He was surrounded by flames,” Elop wrote. “Through the smoke and heat, he barely made his way out of the chaos to the platform’s edge. When he looked down … all he could see were the dark, cold, foreboding Atlantic waters.”

Call it the parable of the burning platform. The Finnish mobile-phone manufacturer that had once been able to comfortably claim that its distinctive ringtone was the most listened-to melody in the history of music is watching its dominance go up in smoke. Since the launch of the iPhone in 2007, Nokia’s share of the smart-phone market has dropped from 51% to 27%, according to the research firm Gartner. In the midrange, phones carrying Google’s Android operating system have just surpassed Nokia’s smart phones in sales. And a host of low-priced Chinese competitors are nipping at its heels. Brand loyalty is at an all-time low. Like the oil worker, Elop, who had joined Nokia from Microsoft in September, needed to make a dramatic decision. And like the oil worker, he decided to jump.

Read more.