Stephen Elop may now be the leader of Microsoft's devices division but before then he was the CEO of Nokia, and a new book about his reign at the Finland company labels him as "one of the world's worst – if not the worst – chief executives."
That's the conclusion made by Pekka Nykänen and Merina Salminen, the authors of "Operation Elop", which was released earlier this week, The duo, who work at the Finnish business newspaper Kauppaleht, interviewed over 100 people, mostly former Nokia employees, for their book. The final result paints a picture of poor decision making by Elop, who was brought in to take over as CEO of Nokia in 2010 following a number of years working at Microsoft.
Some people have believed Elop was actually sent in by Microsoft deliberately to undermine Nokia so that they could later take over the company, and indeed in April Microsoft acquired Nokia's Devices and Services division. However, Nykänen and Salminen don't agree, saying, "Elop's role can be summarized accordingly: he failed in his attempts to save Nokia. He made monumental mistakes – but all in good faith. He took massive risks by placing all of his eggs in one basket (the Windows Phone platform)."
Do you agree with the author's statment that Elop turned out to be one of the world's worst CEOs?
