There are some good sources for the 'attitude' that ideas are cheap, easy, and plentiful and execution is difficult, hard, and everything.
Google search:
"Ideas are easy execution is hard"
gives about 4,700 hits.
Google search:
"Ideas are easy" Kawasaki
yields as its first result:
http://www.forbes.com/2004/11/04/cx_gk_1104artofthestart.htm...
with
Art Of The Start
Ideas Are Easy, Implementation Is Hard
Guy Kawasaki, 11.04.04, 9:55 AM ET
So this attitude goes back at least to 2004.
At
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBvuirDPHKA&feature=playe...
is an interview by John Heilemann (New York Magazine) of columnist-correspondent venture partners John Doerr (KPCB) and Fred Wilson (Union Square) at the OreillyMedia, Web 2.0 Summit 2010: "Point of Control: Finance", November 15-17, San Francisco, CA.
There one of Doerr's remarks was:
"Ideas are easy. Execution is everything."
The YouTUBE video is from a link at Fred Wilson's blog AVC.com at
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/web2-interview-with-john-and...
which is Fred's thread on the interview.
On that thread at
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/web2-interview-with-john-and...
is a rebuttal to Doerr's claim. The core of the rebuttal is:
Bad ideas are easy, and plentiful, and then, sure, execution is difficult and everything. Good ideas are difficult and rare, and then execution can be routine, and the US is awash in the ability to do routine execution well.
There is a fundamental problem with any empirical, summary observation such as:
"Ideas are easy. Execution is everything."
In many areas, for a variety of reasons, some quite solid, 'averages' are important. So, in venture capital, we should note two points:
First, just looking at what entrepreneurs send Doerr, likely the empirical average would be
"Ideas are easy".
Second, since likely such a large fraction of what entrepreneurs try is from "easy" ideas, even if their expected return on investment (ROI) is much less than for good ideas, if look at successful startups, then maybe, still, will see that most of them started with easy ideas and then were successful mostly just from execution.
So, the fundamental problem is that in venture capital, such empirical averages are next to irrelevant: Doerr, etc. are looking for successes, and only a tiny fraction of what they see in their e-mail or even in successes in market are good guides to planning for success.
More generally, empirical data can be terrific stuff. Maybe fundamentally it could be enough for all of 'information', but from just a little consideration that would take some unreasonably large amount of data.
So, instead of just empirical data, we have other methods. E.g., from some fundamentals, we can engineer solutions that are new and quite solid.
In the history of applied science and engineering, there are many projects where initial ideas were presented just on paper, were carefully reviewed and seen to be quite solid, and then execution was both routine and successful.
Parts of our civilization are quite good at such reviewing. Maybe biomedical technology venture capital does such reviews, but it does appear that information technology venture capital essentially never does. So, a really good idea will get evaluated essentially only in the head of an entrepreneur, and everyone else will see at most just the execution.