There are those who do. Even without patents. They leverage the internet/publicity/rpost etc to deter intellectual theft and also learn who to talk to and how a

There are those who do. Even without patents. They leverage the internet/publicity/rpost etc to deter intellectual theft and also learn who to talk to and how at companies, leaping over those barriers. There's a book reference here I'd like to drop but I don't have it handy. Few ideas are easily patent protected, plus it's easier to improve execution than the quality of one's ideas - so you're always advised to do what's easier. (First off, at least.) Note too that "Execution" is often a way of saying "patentable ideas that you can hide instead of patenting them" - which is to say, trade secrets (always more valuable than patents, not least because they don't expire.) Intel was built on just such an invisible trade secret (akin to annealing) that made their memory (this is pre-cpu days) far more reliable than competitor's. So a lot of those who expound about "execution" actually mean "ideas", just non-public ideas. The other thing that prioritizing execution says, is that people tend to have part of an idea, and not realize how much more thinking (and further patentable ideas) are necessary to make it work. Having a necessary-but-not-sufficient patent (such as Wang's 2D iron-core memory patent, back in the day) is not as valuable as a necessary-and-sufficient series of patents, or far more complex patent. Also the system (laws for sale) is tilted so that corporations can appropriate the ideas of individuals, in many ways. They are put in a position to patent-and-execute; and individuals are short-sheeted.