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If you take a look at successful companies you'll find that the ideas behind them are in no way unique, and more often than not they're not based on an idea but

by mixmax 17y ago

If you take a look at successful companies you'll find that the ideas behind them are in no way unique, and more often than not they're not based on an idea but on a market. Here are the ten most profitable companies in the Forbes 1000 list and what they do: ExxonMobil - Oil & Gas Operations Gazprom Russia - Oil & Gas Operations Royal Dutch Shell - Oil & Gas Operations Chevron - Oil & Gas Operations BP - Oil & Gas Operations PetroChina - Oil & Gas Operations General Electric - Conglomerates Microsoft - Software & Services Toyota Motor - Consumer Durables Nestlé - Food, Drink & Tobacco Only General Electric and Microsoft seem to be based on an idea, the others adress a market and create a product to fit that market. And it can be argued whether these are successes because of the idea - Edison tried thousands of different configurations before he actually invented the lightbulb, and Microsoft bought their first hit-product DOS from Tim Paterson and became successful by selling it, not inventing it. Execution apperas to have been paramount in their success. These examples aren't unique. Even Google, often touted as the canonical "idea" company couldn't sell their technology, even though they tried. They only created Google after futile attempts at selling the idea to among others Yahoo.

sendos 17y ago
"Even Google, often touted as the canonical "idea" company couldn't sell their technology, even though they tried. They only created Google after futile attempts at selling the idea to among others Yahoo." Yes, idea+execution is what matters. But, without the great idea, the execution doesn't amount to much, at least in the high-tech area (in the industrial/manufacturing/oil business, there is not much room for new ideas, so of course execution is the primary determinant of success) Before Google came out with their search algorithm, there were lots of companies trying to do search. I believe Altavista was considered the best at the time. What did Google have that all these other search engines didn't? Was it execution? I doubt it. A lot of very capable people were and are working on many other search engines, and yet none has the market penetration that Google has. What Google had was a much better algorithm, i.e. a much better idea on how to rank search results.

by mixmax 17y ago

sendos 17y ago

"Even Google, often touted as the canonical "idea" company couldn't sell their technology, even though they tried. They only created Google after futile attempts at selling the idea to among others Yahoo." Yes, idea+execution is what matters. But, without the great idea, the execution doesn't amount to much, at least in the high-tech area (in the industrial/manufacturing/oil business, there is not much room for new ideas, so of course execution is the primary determinant of success) Before Google came out with their search algorithm, there were lots of companies trying to do search. I believe Altavista was considered the best at the time. What did Google have that all these other search engines didn't? Was it execution? I doubt it. A lot of very capable people were and are working on many other search engines, and yet none has the market penetration that Google has. What Google had was a much better algorithm, i.e. a much better idea on how to rank search results.