Can you unpack 'was installed'? Microsoft doesn't have the ability to appoint Nokia's CEO.

Of course they wouldn't have the ability to appoint at will, but they certainly could install opportunistically. You start by spotting someone who manages their career in a way that indicates useful skills and mindset:

http://www.siliconbeat.com/2008/01/11/microsoft-beware-steph...

...then you make them a high-valued member of your senior leadership team...

http://www.crunchbase.com/person/stephen-elop

...then when opportunity strikes and Nokia tries to buy him away you set up an under-the-table quid-pro-quo deal that would, one presumes, dwarf the $6m signing bonus Nokia gave him:

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2011/03/11/stephen-elop-of-noki...

Sure, it's just conjecture, but it's not implausible.

You haven't answered my question at all. I'm asking how MSFT can "install" someone at Nokia. All you've said is that Elop was a good employee who got promoted, and then Nokia came and tried to hire him. That's not MSFT "installing" anyone.

The far simpler explanation is that if Elop is going to make a big bet with Nokia, he feels safer doing it with MSFT (who need Nokia, and where he knows people) than Google (who don't, and where he doesn't).

I'm sorry. The only question that I see is to unpack "install", which I take as a figurative expression meaning to analyze something into its component elements. I broke down everything that I meant to imply by the word, so you'll have to ask a different question.

Edit to reply below: your probability analysis ignores Elop's improbable behavior as described by hollerith above. And, again, this is not my explanation (this conjecture was all over threads discussing the deal the day it was announced). I'm not even saying that I buy into it, although I do have to acknowledge that people involved with deals in the billions of dollars are seldom strangers to opportunism.

I think a more likely explanation is that the causality is in the other direction: the Nokia board was already leaning toward making a deal with Microsoft before they hired Elop, and he was hired with that in mind.

You didn't break it down, though. Your explanation still contains the word 'install', imbued with the same probability distribution of implications as before.

In your opinion, if there were no “under-the-table quid-pro-quo deal” giving Elop an incentive to make a deal with Microsoft, what would he (or another CEO) have done instead?

The Nokia board fired the previous CEO because, well, his pet strategy was failing. So some kind of radical shakeup was needed. The two most obvious alternatives were “get in bed with Microsoft” and “get in bed with Google”. While Google doesn’t need Nokia’s help promoting Android, Microsoft desperately needs some major player to support Windows Mobile. Therefore Nokia is in a better negotiating position w.r.t. Microsoft than w.r.t. Google.