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I remember one of my lecturers in University, who at the time was probably 50, state that he 'had the idea for Toy Story in the 80's but the difference is that
by illwrks 5y ago
I remember one of my lecturers in University, who at the time was probably 50, state that he 'had the idea for Toy Story in the 80's but the difference is that he did nothing with the idea, while the Pixar guys did.'
Over the years I've taken this to mean that everyone has ideas, but it's doing something with those ideas is the valuable bit.
Yes you might fail but you'll learn something, but you can lower the risk of failure if you surround yourself with the talented people.
- busyant 5y agoHad a prof in grad school who won a Nobel. He was giving a summary of his lab's research to us first year students and he said the same thing. "Ideas are cheap. Even the one that made me famous. Execution counts"
- maroonblazer 5y agoSame. My prof laughed at NDAs for the same reason. Ideas aren't what's valuable. It's having the drive, dedication, inspiration and level of excellence to bring it to life.
- WalterBright 5y agoYup. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Which is why I oppose a lot of IP law. For example, "internet on a phone" is an idea. Getting it to work is another matter entirely.
- wahern 5y agoIncentive to create or invent isn't the actual justification for copyright and patents, neither from the perspective of the law nor economics. Copyrights are justified as an incentive to publish and distribute, while patents are justified as an incentive to reduce to practice (i.e. actually build the thing) and disclose. However, all of that still begs the question of whether those incentives are actually necessary to achieve similar outcomes in social welfare. AFAIU, empirical evidence for patent regimes in particular seem to be equivocal at best.[1] Nonetheless, the justifications do indeed recognize that what actually matters is whether or not people do something constructive with their ideas. [1] Case in point: not only did I read the book, Against Intellectual Monopolies, I paid for a Kindle copy even though it was published gratis ;)
- couchand 5y agoI got the same lesson from Cosmo Kramer. Kramer: I conceived of this whole project two years ago. Jerry: Which part? The renovating the restaurant you don’t own part or spending the two hundred million you don’t have part?
- mgkimsal 5y agoBut then he did conceive of an idea, pitch it, then it was stolen by Calvin Klein! ("Beach...")