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A lot of people want to be "the idea guy", because it's cool and relatively easy. The problem is that ideas are cheap.

The value of any given idea is really low - I would argue that for many organisations ideas even have a negative value on average, because you are going to spend a lot of time dealing with the idea without it actually becoming something that generate value in the end.

Even if you have an idea, that works, and that will generate significant value if realised, until that idea IS realised, it is a negative cost.

People who can generate a large amount of those ideas are a commodity.

People who can cheaply identify an idea that can be realised and that have access to resources to realise it, and that can go through the process of actually realising the idea are not a commodity.

The bottle neck for putting new ideas to market is not the idea generation, and so the people who consider themselves "always starters" is not a scarce resource, hence I dont need to rotate them from department to department - every department I have already have access to more than enough good ideas, so adding the "always starter" to that department would be a negative cost.

"The idea guy" is not brilliant guy. From my understanding, the brilliant guy should clearly know when, what ,how to do the correct thing. The "correct" thing is which may suit for current business demand or for future business requirement.

The value of any given idea is really low

I would agree if you mean average idea. Really great ideas are rare, difficult, and can change the world. The people who come up with those are rather special.

And, unfortunately, rare, and almost never (in my somewhat limited experience) think of themselves as 'idea guys.'

But this hivemind (nicely crurated by VCs- think that through) that ideas are worthless is very wrong. Unfortunately, discussions about it tend to start conflating ideas and execution- as, indeed, it is hard to separate them when you get down to it.

Really great ideas also have low value. Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people before it is known to the world.

The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.

> The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.

Nonetheless that doesn't make the idea itself worth little (let alone nothing). By analogy, land is normally little use unless you put a building or infrastructure on it or start farming or mining it. And it's seriously expensive and difficult to do those things. But that doesn't make the value of land low. Land isn't just valuable, it's expensive in the most literal and straightforward you-pay-money-for-it sense, sometimes staggeringly so.

Land is sort of a good example (there is scarcity involved, which makes it not a perfect analogy).

Land doesn't have any intrinsic value. There are two reasons (unused) land has value:

1) Someone expects to be able to use it to create value 2) Someone expects that someone else will want to use it to create value in the future and they expect that scarcity will come into play allowing them to charge more for it in the future than it currently costs to buy.

Land is only staggeringly expensive if either the value expected to be generated from 1) is exceptionally high or the expected value someone else will generate from it in 2) is exceptionally high.

If those aren't in play, you can get land very cheaply, or even for free, or in extreme cases be paid to take over land (that usually only applies for contaminated land etc).

To a first approximation, the good ideas are precisely those which can be used to create a lot of value: they're the land in Shanghai. It's not clear to me in what sense of 'intrinsic value' such land or ideas would lack it while (say) a pile of high-quality bricks would not. Conversely, if ideas are worthless only in the sense that building materials or pig-iron are worthless then in any ordinary sense they are not worthless at all.

Obviously ideas are less reliably scarce than land, because a number of people can have the same idea independently, and also because once another person hears your idea they can steal your fire without paying you, so it's difficult to trade an idea in a way that doesn't remove your ability to capture the value from it. But a high-quality and unobvious idea tends to occur to only a few people at any time, and the awkwardness of trying to do deals with them is far from rendering them valueless either. It's certainly not the case that good ideas are plentiful in the sense that if there one specific good idea to solve your problem but you don't think of or hear of it, then don't worry, there are lots of similarly good and suitable ideas lying around and one is almost certain to come to your attention soon.

A different, and notable distinction between land and ideas is that people are usually better at recognising valuable land than good ideas, as Frank Aiken observed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Howard_H._Aiken . This is one reason why some ability to "finish" (in terms of external circumstances as well as internal factors like temperament and character) is such a valuable accompaniment to having a good idea: it helps to have something relatively tangible (be it only a prototype) to force down others' throats.

>Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people

It wasn't very brilliant then, was it?

Most ideas aren't that brilliant. If it occurred to you, it likely occurred to somebody else. Ideas are a product of your environment. While we pretend to be unique a lot of what we do is pretty common to dozens, if not hundreds, or thousands of people.

Even ideas as earth shaking and complex as Infinitesimal Calculus and Quantum Mechanics were developed in parallel initial by people with little to no communication between each other.

That's the point, isn't it? Truly good ideas are rare.

We're treading dangerously close to "no true Scotsman" territory here.

No True Scotsman's ideas are unique. /sarcasm

Only in that some intrinsically good ideas are fairly obvious. Others are not.

(a-priori: for some reason I can't reply directly to you)

It's not quite a "no true Scotsman" since great ideas do happen and happen fairly often, in the grand scheme of things (there are over 100 Nobel prize nominees every year). The oft-repeated argument about ideas versus execution is that ideas are a dime a dozen, which is true, but most of them are not really all that great or original. The same can be said for any resource.

Broad elevator-pitch-level ideas may well be of little value, but specific ideas about strategy for a given organization at a given time are hugely valuable. There is a significant difference betwen the ideas person who just spouts out 'x for y' type product ideas, and the ideas person who is always coming up more effective processes for getting work done and achieving goals.

Even those specific ideas have value only speculatively; specific case hypotheses are more easily testable, but they only have value, only provide benefit, when results of execution are realized.

brilliant != unique

Yeah I mean "If I am operating a business and someone brings an idea for something we should do inside that business, the expected value of that idea is close to 0, and for some business it may be negative".

That doesnt say that all ideas are useless. Huge businesses are built off of ideas all the time. Whether it be by accidental timing, cutting edge research, new synergy opportunities or actively spotting a hole that can be filled, the businesses start with an idea and they are not useless for sure.

Once you are up and operating a business however, if an idea is not about something you can trivially do as part of daily operations (continuous improvement has amazing value) but rather is something you need to divert significant resources or attention to in order to potentially realize some other values, then the value of the idea itself, on average, is low, because you will have a lot of these ideas, and you will not be able to dedicate your resources and attention to more than a few of them at a time.

It is far more valuable (on average) to be able to effectively choose WHICH of the already existing ideas have the best return than being able to add another idea to the pile.

Agreed.

> as, indeed, it is hard to separate them when you get down to it

Indeed. For one thing, probably nearly anyone who has successfully had good ideas is a "finisher" to some extent (though to very varying extents). Isaac Newton certainly thought hard and persevered in his researches, but as soon as you're bringing him in as an example of a "finisher" as opposed to an "ideas man" you've pretty badly undermined any distinction you were building between the two.

http://sivers.org/multiply

And execution is (therefore) "just" a multiplier of ideas.

You definitely need both.

Agreed. However, this is not about the idea guy.

There's a difference between an idea guy and a Proof of concept guy.

I agree with you so completely. I have seen this all my life, especially with myself. The things I am proud of are not those brilliant ideas lying half finished somewhere. It is those imperfect, simple things that I finished but which work and which still work now and which are a continual source of pleasure.

I love starting phase of a new projects too. However, I believe that working only on starting phase of many projects would be detrimental for the person. Later phases of the projects often gives you feedback on how well you have done in the beginning. If you participate only on beginning (design mostly), you will miss that feedback and you will not even know it.

What looks like great clever idea in the beginning sometimes turns out to be too difficult to maintain down the road. The new technology or approach that speeds you up so incredibly during first weeks can became huge drag withing few months. Smart clever hacks so cool first six weeks can make the system extremely fragile twelve months later.

Your projects rotating starter never involved in later phases of the projects may become problem on himself.

Second argument is about fairness. Finishers are not people who love to do all that less exciting work needed to actually finish the thing. Neither are they too stupid to work on design phase.

Most often, they are people who feel responsibility towards project completion. If you do not allow them to work on those interesting parts too and force them to fix other peoples bugs all the time, they are likely to leave for another company.

> the always starters

I have the feeling, that everyone who don't want to do real work, is this kind of person...

There are a big bunch of people out there with ideas, but only a fraction of them will realize their ideas.

This is why there are "non-technical-founders" (I have this idea, I just need someone _helping_ me to implement it) and why developers are paid so much money.

Because everyone can have ideas, but not everyone can make them work.

On the other hand, technical founders can make the idea work, but can't get people to use it, which makes it just as worthless (with a lot of wasted time and added stress, to boot). An "ideas guy" who can actually sell those ideas is pretty valuable.

That is not an "ideas guy"; that is a "sales person". And a strong sales person is essential and actually adds value. While some technical founders can also be great sales people; it is uncommon so this is a good pairing.

When people say "ideas guy", at least in my local techno-sphere, it means the person that has "some great idea", but no skills to implement, no skills to sell it, and no money to back it.

We get "idea guys" at our tech meetups on a somewhat regular basis. They just show up one day, and it's always the same thing, "So I have this great idea to do X, but I don't know how to program. I don't have any money to pay anyone, but I'll give you a 10% equity to build my idea. Huh?, no no I don't have any existing customer relationships either. Now which one of you can get this done the fastest?"

On the other hand we have people that fit into one of the 3 necessary/valuable categories (Implementers/Sellers/Financial Backers). People in all 3 of these categories have ideas and add real value.

See this Charlie Rose interview with Jim Collins on his new book, Great by Choice: Uncertainty, Chaos, and Luck -- Why Some Thrive Despite Them All, where Jim talks about what it takes for a genius/artist to thrive (http://www.hulu.com/watch/298461).

Maybe these "always starters" and "distracted geniuses" are in search for truth and purity -- for meaning -- and are continuously iterating on and refining their value system in such a way that their values change between the time they start exploring an idea until the time they understand the idea. Or maybe their values don't change during the process, but once they fully understand the idea they were exploring, they find it's not valuable enough for them to commit more time to, even though others might find it valuable.

Jim's research reveals that the big things happen at the rare cross between creativity and discipline. It's the genius/artist who when they see and set their hands on the big thing, they grab it by the throat and don't let go.

Maybe the path to this intersection of creativity and discipline is for the genius/artist to first focus on peeling back the layers within themselves -- to spend time contemplating until they find their core values -- to "know thyself" -- and then once they have gotten to the root, they'll have the clarity of purpose needed to align their core values with their work and will be able to pursue their life's purpose without being distracted by frivolous matters.

Your second paragraph said it. The brilliant men don't slave for others, they have their own thing to find or follow.

Though I really like your idea, and think that I may fit into 1 or more categories described in your post, I don't think it is a good thing for the brilliant guy.

The world only remembers the one who finishes, rather than the one who throws out an idea and then walks off. It may be easy for the brilliant guy to find excuses to not make more commitment and finish, he's just being either lazy or inconfident to implement his own idea. If he never finishes a thing, how can he know if it is good or not? how can he gather more practical experience?

It may or may not be good for the employer, it is definitely bad for the employeed to indulge in not having to finish.

The thing is that there's huuuuuge road between 'kind-of-working prototype' and 'something deliverable to the client'. And it takes very different kinds of people for the portions of it.

A "brilliant never-finisher" is great for the idea->'kind-of-working prototype'/PoC, and yes, I think they should struggle to at least get to this, not just throw an idea. But the thing is that this is usually just 20% of the road, and they'd bee useless or even damaging for the rest of the 80%, so it's better to let them move on. And the 'damaging' part is very real (!!): someone who keeps pouring new and better ideas into a project that already has the ideas it needs to be a product is actually bringing negative value by increasing time-to-market, even if everyone only perceives the fact that the product would not even exist without him and that all his ideas are great.

By letting the 'brilliant non finisher' start a new project (just give him something challenging and an almost-zero budget until he's really needed again if the company doesn't have the resources for something else), you're avoiding a potential big loss or even a catastrophic failure (imagine the competition brings something inferior to market, grabs to whole market share, and then even poaches the brilliant guys from you afterwards). The only cost to pay would be that you need to keep paying the brilliants for the rest 80% of project duration to keep them for feedback and new projects, while they climb rocks or sip cocktails and you and the rest of the team sweat your guts out (hard to swallow) OR finance some micro-pet-projects to keep their minds working (hard to support).

> even today, we are incredibly bad at managing [...] brilliant people

That is an important question, and unfortunately, I haven't seen lots of books on that topic.

Except maybe "Herding Cats: A Primer for Programmers Who Lead Programmers" by J. Hank Rainwater: http://books.google.de/books/about/Herding_Cats.html?id=9xFP...

(This is not so much about "brilliant" people, but about creative people - especially good programmers - in general.)

These things might be backed into the social systems they exist in and therefore very hard to engineer.

Prototyping and R&D seems to be a great place for these people. Build MVP, start to build things up on the business end, show its potential, hand off to engineering and let them productionize it. "Idea men" have to at least bring their ideas to the point of implementation.

Alternatively, working on tooling, libraries, tricky bug fixes and other odds and ends may be good projects for the inattentive.