Before Nokia made phones, it made paper, rubber boots, and cables

Nokia was founded in 1865 in Finland as a wood-processing and paper mill on a river it took its name from — at the time, nobody had any idea it would ever be associated with electronics.

The twist: over the following decades, the company merged with a rubber goods factory (making, among other things, galoshes and tires) and an electrical cable plant, forming a single conglomerate spanning the paper, rubber, and electrical industries at once — it wasn't until the second half of the 20th century that it gradually moved into electronics and telecommunications.

Before Nokia became the world's biggest mobile phone maker in the 1990s and 2000s, the company was simultaneously producing televisions, computers, and even rubber boots — only later did it narrow its focus entirely to telecom.

The stakes: Nokia's history shows that a company's economic success doesn't have to come from one consistent strategy from day one — sometimes it's the ability to radically, repeatedly reinvent its entire industry that decides whether it survives for over a century and a half.