Jack Dorsey’s Advice To Nokia: “You Make Too Many Products. Focus On 3”

There is no shortage of Nokia news this morning. The struggling Nordic giant is trying to stage a comeback with a bevy of new products—everything from Windows phones to lower-end models. But maybe it is trying to do too much.

Twitter and Square founder Jack Dorsey has some advice for the company, which he delivers via a Tweet: “you make too many products. Focus on 3.”

It’s a very Steve Jobs piece of advice, who famously said, “Focus is about saying No.”. Recall that when Jobs returned to Apple he cleaned up the mess at the then almost bankrupt company by simplifying its product line into four things Apple did really well: desktop, portable, consumer, pro. If a product didn’t fit in one of those boxes, it was killed.

Dorsey too is a proponent of minimalism. After all, he did invent Twitter. But even at Square, it’s all about editing down the product. Nokia takes more of a market segmentation approach. It wants to please everyone, and ends up pleasing no one.