05 Feb 2010, Posted by Scott Goodstein in Future Forward, Innovations, 0 Comments

Future Forward – Scott Goodstein

Since his travels to Helsinki, Scott Goodstein has been on the move about the globe, with stops, for example, in Australia and Brazil. Working on his business focused on social networking, text messaging, and lifestyle marketing for non-profits and political campaigns, he is constantly attending and lecturing at industry conferences after his two-year stint with the Obama presidential campaign. He notes the majority of these events attended lack the incredible level of organization he experienced on his Helsinki trip. “Every single meeting was very thought out and impressive,” recalls Goodstein. “I actually personally gained out of just about every meeting, far exceeding my expectations.”

While Goodstein notes he didn’t travel to Helsinki to become the country’s PR person, he now finds himself citing statistics in his lectures and presentations garnered, for example, during his meetings with Nokia. “The company is now the largest camera manufacturer in the world. Not because they wanted to be the largest camera manufacturer in the world, but because they put a camera in every cell phone. That shocks a lot of people in the U.S., because Nokia is not really in the U.S. market anymore. But as a world leader, they are dominant. They are also poised to become the largest GPS provider in the world, because again, they are going to put GPS in every phone and once they have completed that, you’ll have no reason to go out and buy little GPS devices for your car. And most interestingly, Nokia is actually doing more on English translation than a lot of the American companies. The inexpensive Nokia phones exported to Africa and India include English language tutorials. They are helping indigenous people sell goods and services through the phone by knowing what the English definitions. They are saying, this is the language, and they realize they should be training the world in it. And they’re taking this proactive stance not with the $500 phone but with the $40 phone.”

On the social media front vis-à-vis Finland’s election process, Scott found himself thinking about things happening in Finland a very different way. “The election process is so different in a smaller country. You have a very conservative party that is probably better on women’s rights issues, one of the first bodies in government from that leadership and party to elect women. The number of women elected into Finnish parliament and running top positions in Finnish parliament is pretty amazing. It was educational to look at those as models in contrast to the political machine system we have in the United States where people actually work for a living in politics. I make reference to the political system all the time now.”

Goodstein remains in touch with his friends at Nokia, and has compared and written about the company’s new phones that have come out since his trip to Helsinki. “It’s been fun and exciting to be able to cite statistics and information that are new for the majority of my audiences.” He is in discussions with Matti Makkonen’s new mobile startup and his team that developed text messaging to explore how they can work together trying out some of their new technology. “There’s so much Finland has to offer on the social media front. I’m interested in seeing what will be next from this innovative country.”