tjyrinki

@tjyrinki considered that the biggest tech company in the country just decided they can outsource their whole R&D...

@Bergie Minister Mauri Pekkarinen calls it "The Second coming / birth of a 150 yrs old company. I'm curious about how this re-birth will take place with dramatically down scaled r&d. Elop says, that less people in R&D will increase productivity dramatically. Where do they start cutting? It will hurt Finlands r&d scene a lot.

This hurts more than the IT-bubble ever did.

esr: While you’re at it, spare a little sorrow for the entire nation of Finland. Heard of company towns? Welcome to the company country. Nokia accounted for a third of the market cap in their stock exchange in 2007 and ships a quarter of Finland’s exports by itself. If the company goes under, Finland probably returns to being a backwater with timber and wood pulp as its major exports.

Just need to think about everything else now, not focusing on Nokia which inevitably becomes more (not wholly) of a past thing in Finland.

@tjyrinki agreed, there is some potential for turning this into good. Nokia has been able to recruit almost all of Finnish tech talent for last 15 years, making start-ups quite difficult to staff. This will now change, but then the other problem of Finnish entrepreneurial landscape remains: the lack of capital in this country.

Valtteri Halla: From death and decay nature usually sprouts new life and this is no different in the hi-tech ecosystem. The thing now is to hold fast to our remaining assets and trust in the creative force.

Faith in the Future and new Fighting Spirit: we will survive. This is not the first crisis in Finnish history. We've the skills and tools to build something new. We don't need to trust in one and only God(father). There is life outside Keilaniemi as well. This could be a great independence struggle for thousands of small software and R&D intensive companies. Now, there is nobody saying NIH. Management by Perkele in small scale could be interpreted: Let's show from where the kana kusee.

It's time to wake up, Finland! Let's fix a team session to discuss http://www.personaleu.eu , especially its TeamFinder. I'm sure Tieke will give us a room for that.

People have been crying out for a 'New Nokia' for years, even when there was nothing wrong with the present one. :) Well, here's your chance. The timing is actually quite good if you look at it from the perspective of creating new opportunity. There's opportunity, changes in tech and even funding floating around. If people will just take their eyes off Nokia for a little while, this will get real interesting, real soon.

@jtunkelo yes, the question is whether the Finnish IT sector can survive the transition period

@bergie You mean the IT suppliers dependent of Nokia? Yeah, there is that. I'm sure there's been backup plans long in planning though, I think it's mainly the individual developer that may not be so prepared.

@jtunkelo for sure all smart players have backup plans. But did any of those anticipate Nokia dropping whole area of software development?

@bergie Frankly, I do think the writing was on the wall for some time, it was just hard to even consider that possibility. Sure, there may have been an element of the Trojan horse here, but Nokia let it happen nonetheless. I'm sure there was a fight, but we may never hear the story. At least not for some time.

Yanks are ruthless in business. Microsoft maybe most of all. It shouldn't have been a surprise in any way. We Finns need to keep learning that lesson, apparently.

@jtunkelo true. And the fact remains that Finland is a small, peripheral country that has a poor climate, skewed population structure and low level of available capital. Successes like Nokia are lucky breaks that can lift the whole country, but maybe it'd be better to focus on small businesses instead of one large enterprise that can be killed this swiftly

@bergie Yes... big capital almost always brings big challenges. And scale in and of itself. RIght now, it's back to basics. Here's hoping new leaders will emerge to facilitate the change. And who knows, maybe in a few years time a new runaway success emerges from all of that intense development. Or several that are a little smaller.

So, @tjyrinki @jtunkelo, what would you like to build or see built in Finland? What do you see as the promising growth areas?

@bergie Clean tech and energy in general is absolutely one of the most interesting and real growth areas. Need some unifying force there to bring it all together. Won't help Symbian coders much obviously, but that's par for the course.. In info tech, I believe it's going to be more and more about the info and less about tech. Which may not be a strong point for Finland, necessarily.

Agreed, lots of potential in the area of clean tech. And some of that maybe even utilizing software expertise. But where would the investments into it come from?

Also, thinking about the genre of post-PC devices (like smartphones and tablets), I think due to all the outsourcing that everybody does, the barrier of entry for doing something in that space is probably lower than ever. Maybe some more companies like Always Innovating or OpenMoko could appear. There is even one company selling replacement motherboards for smartphones...

@bergie Well, I'm no expert on venture capital, but there are some huge funds around for it. Just not so much in Finland. California is a hotbed of clean/green tech, and Germany in some ways too I hear. Of course, capital has no homeland so if there's something good, it'll eventually get funded. I know that sounds naive, but desperation also drives investment in this particular case.

@bergie And yes, all those post-PC devices are going to lead innovation at least for a few years to come now. Whether one of these homegrown initiatives gain traction remains to be seen. Interesting times, for sure.

@bergie: Well I'd like to see stuff that is properly marketed and designed from purely user experience point of view, not concentrating on the technical aspects in the marketing at all (except if privacy/freedom can be inserted in the non-technical part)... the barrier of entry to do post-PC devices is indeed lowered, and the technology like Linux + Qt has simply become mature enough so that technical aspects don't (need to) limit the user experience. Maybe something disruptive to these restricted software ecosystems (hard to do, since they are restricted in the first place). Of course, now with Nokia diminishing it'd be time also for me to think much more about other technology areas besides mobile consumer devices, and there are lot of interesting areas like the clean tech mentioned.

I believe this huge opportunity, we will have talented people who are frustrated and willing to tackle wicked problems. Money will follow like in germany where they do not have vcmarket but people with strong scientific and industrial talent eg applied in cleantech

Finland has a scattered cluster of green clean and distributed energy tech companies and research orgs, but most of them are still serving national and local needs. The big ones, Wärtsilä, Kemira Water, Metso are strong in some niches globally. The sme companies in these areas are no household names. They perform traditional low-key b2b or public private business operations and coold benfit substantially with uptodated collaborative networking methodology, but their business cultures are not tuned towards open working methods. It would be a dream come true to build a networking infrastructure inclusive #iTraining for this industry; to change attitudes and culture, but some funds should be available to get started.

It's probably time for quick moves by foreign and domestic companies and investors. I just hope it will be Finnish companies that will get the best out of this, instead of people just going to work in foreign companies. Hopefully the government now doesn't solely play according to new Nokia strategy (for example first thousands are fired and then government would pay re-training to support the possible upcoming US-based software ecosystem), but actually understands that it cannot be "Nokia, Nokia, Nokia" anymore in Finland.

We're now trying to figure out pre-natal problems: the eFlop Heko-hekosystem intensive care unit and kinder-garden for new kids on the block has to be established if we don't want to leave the results of the upcoming baby-boom of new companies dumped in the cold. The City of Oulu is preparing a Fund of 100 mio euro as a support system for start-ups. The mayor wants Nokia and TEM to participate. Talk is cheap and doesn't provide real help. New methods are needed and Finland could learn a lot from this crisis if we come up with a pro-active operational strategy. I hate the word strategy while a lot of lip service usually travels behind it, but if we take the right measures, this death-struggle of Nokia as we know it now could lead to a new national ecosystem for more distributed growth of innovations. We've to branch out fast to the global market as well. Finland is a zero-base market and the start-ups should have a strong drive for international fame and success. Angry birds and wild horses are needed.