Sitting in a meeting room that looks out on a frozen Baltic bay, Nokia Oyj Chief Executive Officer Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo mentions a biography he’s reading. It’s about Mauno Koivisto, the president who butted heads with his own Social Democratic Party en route to opening Finland’s 1992 bid to join the European Union.

“He didn’t always pay too much attention to what people were saying,” Kallasvuo says, warming to the point. “He believed in what he was doing.”

To read this Bloomberg report in full, see:
www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/feb2010/gb20100225_055544.htm