Lessons in Innovation from Nokia

Nokia was founded in 1865 as a paper mill in Tampere, Finland. It has renewed itself many times in its long history. At one stage it made rubber boots. Now it is a world leader in mobile devices and is generally recognised as Europe's most innovative major company.

At a recent meeting of the BQF Innovation Unit we had an interesting talk from Pekka Pohjakallio, VP of Concepting and Innovation at Nokia. Here are some of the innovation tips and messages he shared:

"In Nokia we believe that nothing is an innovation until it is in the hands of the consumer.

In the early days of the cable business financial constraints forced us to be innovative. We could not afford to develop our own processors and had to use standard chips so we had to find ways to be different.

We made a big bet on GSM and fortunately this paid off.

R&D spend is 14% of net sales.

Nokia is now the biggest camera manufacturer in the world.

Most of our innovation is design led rather than technology led. For example we offer language training and horoscope applications in India.

Nintendo Wii and Guitar Hero are good examples of design led innovation.

We believe that teams need to be as cross-disciplined as possible.

When we put together the team to work on an initial concept we try to think it right through to what will be in the launch press release.

We talk to the people who are the far extremes - the geekiest of the geeks.

A big challenge for us is how to make our teams independent. How can we give them enough freedom?

We focus on 'what is the user problem we are trying to solve?' Then we prototype, prototype, prototype.

We have an intranet where people can post videos of their ideas.

We crowdsource internally by asking all our people to help with a problem.

We collaborate externally with suppliers and Universities. A lot of our innovation comes from our partners.

Our message to small companies with ideas is, 'Don't be afraid. Approach us.'

We want to be the world's best partnering company.

Innovation is not a separate thing - in Nokia it is part of what you do."

Paul Sloane is the head of the British Quality Foundation Innovation Unit and the author of The Innovative Leader.