Productivity Future Vision

Nokia's Stephen Elop Didn't Start the Fire–But His "Burning Platform" Certainly Lights One

Kara Swisher in News on February 9, 2011 at 6:15 am PT

Memo to tech CEOs everywhere: Now that’s how to write an internal memo. That would be the 1,300-word one that Nokia CEO Stephen Elop apparently penned for employees at the Finnish telecom giant, which inevitably leaked to the media. In it, he uses the harsh but cogent metaphor of a burning oil platform to take a bracing opening shot at turning around Nokia.

Meet Nokia's New CEO: Elop's BoomTown Video (Plus His Vision Quest)!

Kara Swisher in News on September 10, 2010 at 9:21 am PT

Just as the chickens always come home to roost, BoomTown always has a video ferreted away of someone who makes it to the bigs. In this case, here is a video interview I did in April of 2009 with new Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, just a year after he had taken over as president of Microsoft’s Business Division.

Microsoft's Vision of the Future–and the Inevitable Spoof

Kara Swisher in News on August 14, 2009 at 12:09 am PT

One of my favorite “world-of-the-future” videos recently has been one done by Microsoft Office Labs, because it does not seem ridiculously fanciful or impossible to imagine actually happening sooner than much later. But, of course, the folks at IGN.com’s Sarcastic Gamer managed to find the perfect way to poke fun at the video in a spoof that hit the target deftly.