Historically, it was difficult to reinvent a company at the height of its market cap.

When I was in Nokia, I asked why my Finnish colleagues why the company did not reinvest its resources to build the actual smartphone — event its concept video predicted the vision correctly years ago.

The answer was, it would take a long time to rewrite Symbians to support a new paradigm than changing the mechanical design and plastic molding of a phone.

The risk was simply too high — new software, tooling and backend infrastructure, while it was under pressure to release new models every few months to fan off the competition from Asia.

Quarters after quarters, Nokia enjoyed massive market shares that it was not in a hurry to change until it was too late.

Looking back, the answer seems obvious. Yet, it was difficult to commit to the right path. Reinvention often requires repeatedly going from zero to one. That was hard to stomach to most people.

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