[quomopete]

This may sound pendatic, but Accidental Empires is a must read, even after all these years. Particularly if you did not live through the initial rise of the personal computing industry or were too young for it to have any conscious impact on you.

I take it as a humbling record of just how grueling this industry is. But also just how much it spins on happenstance, timing and of course interpersonal politics.

If any lessons come out of that book, it may still be true that putting your effort being creating (or undermining) a standard is one of the core engines of this space.