I think we can put it another way: An idea is worthless until someone is willing to pay for it. Worth is in the eye of the beholder. To me, both of your ideas

I think we can put it another way: An idea is worthless until someone is willing to pay for it. Worth is in the eye of the beholder. To me, both of your ideas really are worthless (no offence). I wouldn't be inclined to pay for either of them, and do not really have an interest in working on either. That said, the market is vast. If you can find someone to pay you for the idea then I will agree that the idea may have value. The problem at this stage is that without any execution on those ideas, both are equally likely to fail. For all we know the market for pachyderm telephones is large and nobody wants SMS downtime messages. There has been no market research done at the point of idea conception. Doing so leads into execution, where the value is generally thought to be created. The other problem is that everyone with skills to build such ideas already have a million of their own. Most wouldn't even consider buying an idea from someone else. If the chances of failure is high, at least you are working on your own failure and not someone else's. That is why ideas are generally considered worthless.