Nokia in Silicon Valley - A visit to NRC Palo Alto

Nokia in Silicon Valley - A visit to NRC Palo Alto

MarketWatch recently came out to see Nokia Research Center Palo Alto to get an overview of some of the work being done by Nokia in the US, and find out why being in Silicon Valley is so important. 

Just two blocks away from Hewlett-Packard Co. headquarters is a small office park with a few glass-paneled, contemporary office buildings. One of the tenants in this unassuming space is the world’s largest cell phone developer, Nokia Corp., which has about 100 people working here in one of its 12 global research labs. 

While technically a Nokia Research Center, and separate from Nokia’s research-and-development teams that work directly with product groups, these engineers have already seen some of their work appear in Nokia’s phones. But since finding a Nokia cell phone is almost as hard as finding a typewriter in Silicon Valley, these researchers are also on a mission.

“Nokia, being a Finnish company, we see our job here is to publicize the Nokia image and infect the rest of the company with a Silicon Valley way,” said John Shen, a research fellow and head of the Palo Alto Nokia Research Center, in a brief chat at the center’s holiday party last week.

That’s a big reason why Nokia named a former top Microsoft Corp. executive, Stephen Elop, as its new chief executive in September. In fact, the board decided on their new CEO in a rare meeting at its Palo Alto labs. “This was one of the first places he visited,” Shen said of Elop after he became CEO. “He really is a Silicon Valley type.”