Who Killed Nokia? How Fear and Emotion Derail Strategy, Innovation, and Truth Telling | The Innovation Show with Aidan McCullen

In this episode, we go inside one of the most dramatic collapses in modern business history: Nokia’s fall from smartphone king to also-ran—and the surprising force behind it.

Rather than a lack of talent, strategy, or intelligence, Prof. Quy Huy (INSEAD) and Prof. Timo Vuori (Aalto University) reveal how shared emotions—especially fear—reshaped what people paid attention to, what they reported upward, and what leaders could truly “see.” The result: critical warnings softened or unsaid, optimism trumping honesty, and a company that drifted into short-term fixes while long-term innovation slipped away.

We unpack the research behind the 2016 paper “Distributed Attention and Shared Emotions in the Innovation Process: How Nokia Lost the Smartphone Battle”, and connect it to leadership, psychological safety, and why organizations sometimes lose to themselves.