????Since Stephen Elop became CEO of Nokia in 2010 he has made a series of bold moves, from releasing a rally-the-troops memo comparing the flailing mobile-phone maker to a man on a burning platform to hitching the company's future to Microsoft's Windows operating system. His other daring deed? Assigning the crucial task of rebooting Nokia's smartphone business -- and by extension, resuscitating the entire company -- to Jo Harlow, a low-key former marketing manager with scant technical experience.

????Harlow unveiled her latest effort, two sleek new phones built atop the latest version of Microsoft's mobile platform, Windows 8, in early September in the wake of the chaos and confusion surrounding a jury verdict that found that No. 1 smartphone maker Samsung had infringed on several Apple patents. Analysts believe Apple (AAPL) will be emboldened by its win to sue other phonemakers, and while some observers have suggested that Microsoft-fueled phones may not be in Apple's cross hairs, one thing is clear: The ruling will push handset companies to differentiate their products from the iPhone. But can beleaguered Nokia (NOK), which largely missed the consumer shift to smart devices, deliver phones that are innovative enough to unseat Apple?

????Harlow, who was tapped in July 2010 by Elop to run the smartphone business, certainly thinks so. She offered Fortune an inside look at the steps she has taken to bring Nokia's newest smartphone line to market, starting with the Lumia 800 and the Lumia 710, released worldwide in the fall of 2011. "Becoming cool again means having great products," she says. Her first step: to show Microsoft (MSFT) some love. To make sure the teams were in sync, she rearranged her organization to match her partner's Windows Phone unit structure. "I can trust her with what she tells me," confirms Terry Myerson, the Microsoft vice president who heads the Windows Phone division. "She uses that same direct and genuine communication to motivate her team."

????Even as she was building bridges with Microsoft, Harlow was dismantling other operations, including teams that had been working on Nokia's internal operating system, Symbian, which lost out to Windows Phone. She says her most difficult day at Nokia was going out to the company's office in Farnborough, England, to lay off hundreds of engineers. "A big part of my job at that time was restructuring the organization that would remain," says Harlow. "It was a huge challenge, but I believed so strongly that this was the route to a great future for Nokia."

????It is too soon to know whether Nokia's smartphone strategy is a hit, but the handset maker has scored some small, early wins. Under Harlow's watchful eye, her team has met its production targets and even won some plaudits. Last quarter Nokia shipped 4 million Lumia phones, double the number it sold the quarter before. Tech blog CNET.com praised the Lumia 800's "innovative design" and "gorgeous screen" but complained about the device's camera and video quality. The newest Lumia devices pack some impressive features -- especially the 4.6-inch Lumia 920, which comes with a souped-up camera that lets users take pictures in low-light settings (see image at the bottom).

????Harlow says Nokia can play to its strength and differentiate Lumia smartphones with innovations in location-based services (it owns mapping provider Navteq), imaging, and hardware design, including the use of new materials.