This reminds me of the lemon problem in economics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons It's n

This reminds me of the lemon problem in economics: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons It's not that ideas are worthless, just like my car isn't worthless. But it's hard to know what a car's worth until it's driven, and it's even harder to know what an idea's worth until it's executed on. Therefore, no market for ideas develops. Nobody buys ideas, since unlike cars, you can't exactly take them out for a "test-drive." In the few places you do see a market, it's usually because information exists about the value of the idea. For example, patent trolls buy patents(ideas) to sue companies that are already infringing(executing) them.