My way of formulating this truth has long been: “It’s doesn’t help being first, if you are very quickly second best.”

But I don’t equate “execution” with “product development”. You can develop the best product on the planet, but if you don’t execute well on everything else (recruitment, communication, cash management, customer insight, investor relations, route to market, etc etc etc) a business will still fail. You have to build the best product AND do everything else right. That’s execution.