[webmaven]

Simon Wardley has continued to evolve and refine the insights that led him to conceiving Zimki, and it is well worth any tech entrepreneur's time to take a look at the current iteration of "Wardley Mapping" to better understand how technologies (and platforms) evolve:

https://learnwardleymapping.com/book/

If Blank and Ries transformed our understanding of startup tactics, Wardley is improving our understanding of strategy.

Simon's account of the Zimki episode is in Chapter 5, if you just want a bit more detail: https://medium.com/wardleymaps/the-play-and-a-decision-to-ac...

[k__]

I have to admit, while I like Wardley mapping, the fact that someone talks about his own (seemingly) failed technology revolution in hindsight, makes me a bit sceptic.

[blitzar]

I find just as many lessons in failures as success, although these are pretty arbitrary labels. Even the greatest success stories are littered with small failures overcome or even ignored.

[k__]

I'm not saying we can't learn from Zimki.

I'm just a bit weary of people claiming they "invented the future" way back before the future actually came.

[webmaven]

Simon doesn't claim he invented PaaS, but he did predict it.

As far as learning from Zimki, I think the lesson Simon says he learned was basically (paraphrasing) "make sure you don't run out of political capital" and watching out for misaligned incentives.