The sight of anthropologists observing the daily routine of rural Indian life may not be everyone’s idea of cutting-edge R&D in the fast-moving, high-tech world of mobile phones. But that’s exactly the approach Finnish mobile giant Nokia took when it set out to design a new product for the “next billion”.

The result was a simple, no-frills device with features tailored to the target markets of the developing world. The Nokia 1200 is suitably robust and dust resistant, provides cost-management features and multiple phone books to allow handsets to be shared between several people, and incorporates a flashlight – useful during power cuts.

John Clarke, CIO at Nokia, says this typifies Nokia’s approach to innovation: “We try to capture a problem that exists; not doing it from the standpoint of inventing a technology in search of a market, but identifying the need and then developing a solution.”

Innovation is something that flows through Nokia – not simply an isolated R&D function – and all “Nokians” (as they are affectionately known internally) are expected to contribute, says Clarke. This philosophy is embodied in an initiative Clarke has spearheaded since he joined Nokia as global IT chief five years ago. Nokia 2.0 is a programme aimed at harnessing new ideas from across the whole organisation and filtering out the ones that show most commercial potential.

“Nokia 2.0 is about looking at our culture and educating individuals to the idea that it is best to share and collaborate on their ideas,” he says. “In addition, we have created Nokia Alpha and Nokia Beta labs [‘a playground for its crack team of software developers’, according to the company’s blog] to show that innovation is a core strength across Nokia.” It is an approach Nokia will need to nurture further in the increasingly competitive mobile market as it defends its leadership position against the likes of Apple, Research in Motion and Google – especially as the popularity of smartphones surges.

Nokia is coming at this from a position of strength, however: despite all the hype around iPhones, BlackBerrys and Android devices, Nokia is still by far the world’s largest mobile manufacturer. Recent global handset sales figures from industry analyst Gartner give the company a 35% global market share, well ahead of nearest rival Samsung with its 21%, and leaving Apple in a distant seventh place with 3%.

Getting to know you

In his career, Clarke has learned a thing or two about delivering great IT to consumers. He joined Nokia from the UK supermarket and financial services giant Tesco, and during his half decade at Nokia he has been at the heart of the company’s strategy to get closer to the consumer. Key to that transformation is better use of the huge amounts of data and insight Nokia collects on users. In the last six months alone, for example, 120 million uniquely identifiable and contactable consumers have engaged with Nokia or with one of its various partner’s services.

“We have a vast amount of data but it hasn’t always been accessible or in a format where we can turn it into truly rich information. So we’ve been trying to transform that. We’ve taken the metadata structure and made the information more usable and accessible to the right people. At the same time, we have ensured that our use of that data protects the privacy of the consumer,” explains Clarke.

At a technology level, these efforts have embraced the use of advanced business intelligence and analytics tools, but not all have been able to address the challenges. “There are issues around integration and standards, and there are issues around scalability,” he says. “Many of the analytics tools that exist today have been developed for a fairly small-scale operation and Nokia is anything but a small-scale operation. We are global and we look at consumers globally, so often we stretch the available technology in terms of its operational constraints.”

Nokia’s competitive edge is rooted in what exactly is being measured and how that information is then used, says Clarke, with an emphasis on tracking key metrics such as consumer lifetime value and the number of active users of Nokia services.

In his broad role as CIO, Clarke is responsible for all global IT processes, systems and information, delivered through a team of 2,000 internal and 1,000 external staff, plus around 1,500 others at various third-party organisations worldwide. Among the many tasks within his remit, he is responsible for global conferencing facilities, factory systems, data warehouses, retail systems and Nokia’s internet presence.

“On top of that, within IT we do occasionally create things that are used by the product teams – to much delight,” he adds.

Like most CIOs, Clarke’s agenda in the current climate is also heavily focused on simplifying systems and processes, keeping costs under control and making Nokia a more agile company so it’s better able to react to changes demanded by the dynamic mobile sector.

But there is more to Clarke’s role than just technology and processes. People are the key to transforming Nokia, he says. For this reason, Clarke leads a programme – Nokia Way of Working – to make greater use of social networking and communication tools with the aim of changing how Nokia employees work together across the globe. “We use our global teleconferencing facilities to enable engineers and developers in different locations to work on the same design,” he highlights.

That goal of exploiting cutting-edge technology is evident throughout his whole career path. With a degree in systems engineering, he started out at US computer-maker Digital Equipment Corp before moving into financial data services with Zurich-based SIX Telekurs.

From there he segued into the networking industry, spending three years with Canada’s Nortel, before a spell as a business architect at consultancy Accenture.

On the way, he picked up an MBA from the UK’s University of Warwick, broadening his horizons beyond technology. “It gave me a good grounding in many other business disciplines. It also taught me the importance of team and syndicated work, and the art of trying to look at problems from different perspectives. I’d always encourage things that take you out of your comfort zone.”

Better, simpler, cheaper

But it was his time at Tesco that proved he was global CIO material. As group technology director, he led the development of the supermarket chain’s ground-breaking Clubcard programme, pioneered the extensive use of mobility in stores and was part of the team that designed the so-called “Tesco in a box” – a set of standardised systems and processes that could be used as Tesco expanded its stores into new markets globally. It was also at Tesco that Clarke says he learnt the importance of experiencing processes first hand, regularly working in supermarkets to get closer to the consumer and understand the company’s core principle of “better, simpler, cheaper”.

“Are your efforts going to make things better for the consumer, simpler for the staff and cheaper to deliver? If they achieve all three things, then great; if they achieve none of them, then you have to question why you’re making the effort in the first place. Tesco is very good at aligning what you’re doing, why you’re doing it and who is going to see the benefit,” says Clarke.

The constant across all of his career moves is the excitement of big challenges. “I’ve always enjoyed creating solutions in very complex environments, doing things that have an impact on the world. I come from a line of people who’ve always built things or grown things, so I’ve just followed that tradition: bringing together expertise and technologies to deliver something that enhances operational productivity.”

And that can be both cross-industry or within the broad organisation. “What I’ve recognised is that most industries share many of the same problems and issues; they have more in common than differences.”

Nokia has many guises, he says – a device manufacturer, a solutions developer and a content provider, among others. “What interests me most about the company is the multiple areas in which it operates,” Clarke continues. “There is still huge scope to utilise technology to maximise the value of information and improve how people work. So I’ll keep on pushing those boundaries and keep looking for the next mountain to climb. Watch out for Nokia 3.0!”

His Nokia base camp for that was initially Finland but is now the UK, although he spends the majority of his time either at the company’s headquarters in Espoo near Helsinki or at one of its global operations. “I am where I need to be and if I’m not there, I connect virtually through various technologies.”

Does that mean the UK national has added the Finnish language to his skill set? “I think my colleagues in Helsinki would laugh if I said yes,” he says. “But my knowledge of sauna etiquette is certainly growing year by year.”

John Clarke: The résumé

1988-1990
Systems integration consultant
Digital Equipment Corp (Systems and software vendor)

1991-1994
Head of product management
SIX Telekurs (Financial data services)

1994-1997
Director
Nortel (Networking systems)

1997-2001
Associate partner & business architect 
Accenture (Management consultancy)

2001-2005
Chief technology officer
Tesco (Retail and financial services)

2005-present
Senior vice president & global CIO
Nokia (Mobile phones)