"Ideas are worth nothing."
While it is seen here regularly -- and is always strangely given a pass -- this remains the most profoundly meaningless, if not outright stupid, thing that anyone in this industry can mutter.
While it is seen here regularly -- and is always strangely given a pass -- this remains the most profoundly meaningless, if not outright stupid, thing that anyone in this industry can mutter.
I could just do something, literally anything, and me, having done a thing, would be worth way more than me, having an idea.
Many people have great ideas, few people have the balls or resources to actually execute them and make them worth something.
Just a thought.
The overall claim has some limited merits, but don't overstate the case.
You generating an idea in your seat about a site that, say, scrapes some public resource and presents in a useful way, are more valuable than the you who uses that same time to make yourself a sandwich.
And the ideas you can have -- ideas which you can only execute after having the ideas themselves -- are of a higher quality than someone who doesn't have your cultural and intellectual resources. Your ideas are more valuable because they are informed by a more nuanced knowledge of how things actually get done.
Or to put another way, if you were approached at a party about an opportunity to work on someone's seed of a project, would you rather that person be an engineer or a fast food employee? No offense to fast food workers, but the engineer has more, and more salient, skills when it comes to this question.
The idea can't be cashed in until it's executed, and an executed idea is superior to an unexecuted one, but in choosing which idea to act on there are clearly better and worse ones.
> someone who doesn't have your cultural and intellectual resources
Unless you are a scholar at the very top of your field, there are thousands other people with the same background and resources as you, or better. A good chunk of them will have had the exact same ideas, plus a thousand variations. A handful will actually do something.
> choosing which idea to act on there are clearly better and worse ones
The act of choosing is the beginning of execution, and is way harder and more valuable than generating ideas.
How would anyone know this?
A handful will actually do something.
What you're saying is 'execution > idea', which is not in contention. It doesn't follow that the idea is worthless.
The act of choosing is the beginning of execution
This seems like semantics to me now.
And if the point is granted, you seem to be arguing against the proposition that 'ideas >= execution' which nobody is proposing.
do you really not understand what this means?
here's an awesome idea. A sensor and software that can read your brain waves so you don't need mouse or keyboard. Awesome idea, right? Worthless without the implementation.
Worthless without a money-making proposition, which is, in many cases, the idea.
if you've got money (and thus, talent), the idea is the most valuable part.
good ideas might be valueless (though you could make a case to say this is also untrue), but they're definitely not worthless.
Sure.
Fertilizer is worthless. Without water nothing can grow.
Gasoline is worthless. Without a spark it can't provide energy.
A 50" LED 120Hz display is worthless. Without a signal to display it can't provide value.
Are those meaningful or honest statements? Is it of any value for people to constantly parrot the nonsensical "parts of a whole are worthless" prattle?
I fully understand what people think they mean when they trot it out, and that is why I think it is garbage. It is refuse being vomited online.
Many of us are excellent software developers. Most of us bide our time developing projects for other people because we have no idea what to build ourselves. Many of the profoundly valuable changes in our industry have come because someone had an idea that was different and ended up changing the world.
Yes, of course the execution mattered. But without the idea the execution would be worthless. So where does that leave us? Some sort of nihilist everything is worthless depression?
Yes, most of the time that is exactly what it is saying. Though when engaged on it invariably the definition will start oozing around amorphously to the point of complete and utter meaninglessness.
Firstly, we aren't talking about laymen and outsiders. In this case we're talking about the company that was far and away the largest technology company. Secondly, ideas may be plentiful, but so is absolutely banal, no-value-added execution. If the quantity of poor examples qualifies the statement, saying that execution is worthless is just as viable, as the overwhleming majority of execution in virtually any domain is terrible.
I have to chuckle at bit at the notion that ideas are so bountiful, though. It's a bit like how everyone is going to write the great American novel...they just need to think of the plot...but anyone can think of a plot so...
It's saying that seemingly novel ideas of solving a "pain point" in first-world life are usually fairly obvious if you'd spent an hour brainstorming with other intelligent people.
This is what people without ideas say. Seriously. As someone who regularly struggles to find ideas that are worth executing on, I seriously wonder what imaginary world so many on here live in.
But writing a great novel is all about execution...
Not terribly applicable here... but at the same time not terribly irrelevant here either.
Ideas are cheap and contagious, execution is expensive and risky.
When I think about the concept of an "idea" vs "execution," I think about the youtube, vimeo, blip, etc sprint. Each company had relatively the same idea--video on the internet--but no number of analysts could've predicted that youtube would be the outright success of the lot. All of them had excellent execution, but it's always risky, and for youtube, it paid off.
It's not like it's impossible to sell an idea, and the world is full of self-styled idea men who are happy to do so, but buyers are thin on the ground.