This exactly. A long time ago I had an opportunity to interact with the highest levels of a company called "Plastic Logic" who had created a flexible e-paper d

This exactly. A long time ago I had an opportunity to interact with the highest levels of a company called "Plastic Logic" who had created a flexible e-paper display that was much more durable than the glass covered displays. They presented their business plan where they were going to market with the "Plastic Reader", basically doing the entire product and software in house. I urged and pleaded with them. I said, "You guys are brilliant at displays, you've got a killer product here. Sell it to people who make readers! You start making money right away and you get better and better at making displays. Let your customers take the market risk of getting the form factor and software right, just start by making money!" The guy with the most sway in the company was the scientist who had actually come up with the way to make transistors on plastic and integrate them into a display. He was (and still is) a brilliant guy. But he was so smart that he felt "the display is the hard bit, everything else is practically off the shelf. Why should we give up our margin and our advantage to people who can't currently get a display with these properties. When we start shipping all other e-readers will become obsolete overnight!" (Not an exact quote but close enough from memory.) I tried to explain how risk didn't care how good your display was, adding to existing risks of getting the displays reliably produced, the rest of the stack put dozens of other ways your product could get stalled on its way to market and the "other guys" were investing like crazy. They couldn't possibly match the software and design engineering talent people that already had a reader on the market had right now. I told the CEO straight up, I said, "This path leads to failure, it always leads to failure." Of course they totally failed and sold off their assets a few times to various hedge funds and guess what, their display never ever made it to mass production because the brilliant guy who designed it in the first place didn't focus on that. I'm still sad they chose that route, it could have been epic.