3 ms·

Value of ideas is massively overstated in biz school lit, imo... Ideas are fine, but it takes a lot of work to prove that one actually works, and then a lot mor

Value of ideas is massively overstated in biz school lit, imo... Ideas are fine, but it takes a lot of work to prove that one actually works, and then a lot more work to bring it to production. All of the work involved needs financial and material support to happen. It's easy to have an armchair idea, but to put a hundred+ hours into the very first realization is extremely difficult if it's not your day job. (And repeat for the thousands(?) of hours necessary for bringing to market...) In my most anti-elitist frame of mind, I expect there's a mismatch between who has good ideas and who has time to prove things out... Elite business schools are populated (on average) by walking Dunning-Krueger effects, powered by trust funds and lack of consequences: of course they have a shortage of good ideas... Meanwhile people with the actual experience and expertise to produce good ideas have day jobs to keep them from executing.

colinmorelli 7y ago
This. It's also worth remembering that the cost to bring products to market - particularly in the software/technology industry, continues to rise. As larger players continue to expand their portfolio of offerings with years of engineering effort behind them, it's significantly more difficult for a small startup to produce something compelling enough for customers to use it over the other options on the market. In other words, the bar for quality and capability in all products we use on a daily basis continues to rise. That has the direct effect of raising the expectations that consumers and businesses have for new products they want to purchase, and thus the cost to build them. That translates to more time needed to deliver something meaningful to market, which is also likely correlated with higher amounts of VC funding concentrated in a smaller number of companies (pre-COVID)

colinmorelli 7y ago

This. It's also worth remembering that the cost to bring products to market - particularly in the software/technology industry, continues to rise. As larger players continue to expand their portfolio of offerings with years of engineering effort behind them, it's significantly more difficult for a small startup to produce something compelling enough for customers to use it over the other options on the market. In other words, the bar for quality and capability in all products we use on a daily basis continues to rise. That has the direct effect of raising the expectations that consumers and businesses have for new products they want to purchase, and thus the cost to build them. That translates to more time needed to deliver something meaningful to market, which is also likely correlated with higher amounts of VC funding concentrated in a smaller number of companies (pre-COVID)