No: Your evidence does not lead to your conclusion. You are working with your "a lot of people" and drawing a conclusion about business success in, since this

No: Your evidence does not lead to your conclusion. You are working with your "a lot of people" and drawing a conclusion about business success in, since this is HN, information technology entrepreneurship. Here's where you get off track: Something under 1% of the people with such 'ideas' achieve success. Or, what fraction of the people can be in the upper 1%? So, the evidence that would be needed would be the role of ideas for that upper 1% or less. As I wrote elsewhere on this thread, what is being assumed here about an 'idea' is just some short description of a 'cutomer need' to be met by, say, a new Web site, say, paper napkins with personalized printing ordered on a Web site and delivered via FedEx. Then, sure, execution is everything. What is being missed, however, is old, traditional, and rock solid: Take a problem millions of people want solved, or that a few people want very, very much to have solved, find a solution, and then execute. Here the implication is that, because the problem has not been solved yet, finding the solution, the 'idea', is challenging. Then commonly people would protect the idea with a patent. If the idea was really good, then the execution should be routine. Examples? Business history is awash in them. I say again: Bad ideas are easy and, then, execution is everything and likely difficult. Good ideas are likely difficult and then execution can be routine.