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company would grow into a seemingly unstoppa-
ble force. Its stock price surged. Then, in November
2007, Forbes ran a prophetic cover with the head-
line, “Nokia: One Billion Customers — Can
Anyone Catch the Cell Phone King?”
Well, yes.
Despite having dominant market share, despite
having the resources and capabilities to transition
to the smartphone era, and despite having a leader
who endorsed and presumably understood
Christensen’s groundbreaking theories on disrup-
tion (though Ala-Pietilä, admittedly, left the
company in 2005), Nokia stumbled. Apple
famously entered the market mid-2007. Google
formed the Open Handset Alliance, powered by the
Android operating system, later that year. Nokia
shares began to slide. In 2013, CEO Stephen Elop
sold Nokia’s ailing cellphone business to Microsoft
for roughly $7 billion. A year later, Microsoft took a
roughly $7 billion write-down on the transaction,
suggesting the business was worthless.
Nokia’s fall is just one of many cautionary tales:
Eastman Kodak, Blockbuster, and Toys R Us were
all destroyed by disruption. Some of today’s great
companies look to be similarly snared in their
own innovator’s dilemma. FedEx started in classic