6 ms·

A lot of people want to be "the idea guy", because it's cool and relatively easy. The problem is that ideas are cheap. The value of any given idea is really lo

by jib 13y ago

A lot of people want to be "the idea guy", because it's cool and relatively easy. The problem is that ideas are cheap. The value of any given idea is really low - I would argue that for many organisations ideas even have a negative value on average, because you are going to spend a lot of time dealing with the idea without it actually becoming something that generate value in the end. Even if you have an idea, that works, and that will generate significant value if realised, until that idea IS realised, it is a negative cost. People who can generate a large amount of those ideas are a commodity. People who can cheaply identify an idea that can be realised and that have access to resources to realise it, and that can go through the process of actually realising the idea are not a commodity. The bottle neck for putting new ideas to market is not the idea generation, and so the people who consider themselves "always starters" is not a scarce resource, hence I dont need to rotate them from department to department - every department I have already have access to more than enough good ideas, so adding the "always starter" to that department would be a negative cost.

felix_xyk 13y ago
"The idea guy" is not brilliant guy. From my understanding, the brilliant guy should clearly know when, what ,how to do the correct thing. The "correct" thing is which may suit for current business demand or for future business requirement.
dhimes 13y ago
The value of any given idea is really low I would agree if you mean average idea. Really great ideas are rare, difficult, and can change the world. The people who come up with those are rather special. And, unfortunately, rare, and almost never (in my somewhat limited experience) think of themselves as 'idea guys.' But this hivemind (nicely crurated by VCs- think that through) that ideas are worthless is very wrong. Unfortunately, discussions about it tend to start conflating ideas and execution- as, indeed, it is hard to separate them when you get down to it.
- mattlutze 13y ago
  Really great ideas also have low value. Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people before it is known to the world. The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.
  - leoc 13y ago
    > The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context. Nonetheless that doesn't make the idea itself worth little (let alone nothing). By analogy, land is normally little use unless you put a building or infrastructure on it or start farming or mining it. And it's seriously expensive and difficult to do those things. But that doesn't make the value of land low. Land isn't just valuable, it's expensive in the most literal and straightforward you-pay-money-for-it sense, sometimes staggeringly so.
    - jib 13y ago
      Land is sort of a good example (there is scarcity involved, which makes it not a perfect analogy). Land doesn't have any intrinsic value. There are two reasons (unused) land has value: 1) Someone expects to be able to use it to create value 2) Someone expects that someone else will want to use it to create value in the future and they expect that scarcity will come into play allowing them to charge more for it in the future than it currently costs to buy. Land is only staggeringly expensive if either the value expected to be generated from 1) is exceptionally high or the expected value someone else will generate from it in 2) is exceptionally high. If those aren't in play, you can get land very cheaply, or even for free, or in extreme cases be paid to take over land (that usually only applies for contaminated land etc).
      - leoc 13y ago
        To a first approximation, the good ideas are precisely those which can be used to create a lot of value: they're the land in Shanghai. It's not clear to me in what sense of 'intrinsic value' such land or ideas would lack it while (say) a pile of high-quality bricks would not. Conversely, if ideas are worthless only in the sense that building materials or pig-iron are worthless then in any ordinary sense they are not worthless at all. Obviously ideas are less reliably scarce than land, because a number of people can have the same idea independently, and also because once another person hears your idea they can steal your fire without paying you, so it's difficult to trade an idea in a way that doesn't remove your ability to capture the value from it. But a high-quality and unobvious idea tends to occur to only a few people at any time, and the awkwardness of trying to do deals with them is far from rendering them valueless either. It's certainly not the case that good ideas are plentiful in the sense that if there one specific good idea to solve your problem but you don't think of or hear of it, then don't worry, there are lots of similarly good and suitable ideas lying around and one is almost certain to come to your attention soon. A different, and notable distinction between land and ideas is that people are usually better at recognising valuable land than good ideas, as Frank Aiken observed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Howard_H._Aiken https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Howard_H._Aiken . This is one reason why some ability to "finish" (in terms of external circumstances as well as internal factors like temperament and character) is such a valuable accompaniment to having a good idea: it helps to have something relatively tangible (be it only a prototype) to force down others' throats.
hawleyal 13y ago
Agreed. However, this is not about the idea guy.
bryan_rasmussen 13y ago
There's a difference between an idea guy and a Proof of concept guy.
kghose 13y ago
I agree with you so completely. I have seen this all my life, especially with myself. The things I am proud of are not those brilliant ideas lying half finished somewhere. It is those imperfect, simple things that I finished but which work and which still work now and which are a continual source of pleasure.

by jib 13y ago

felix_xyk 13y ago

"The idea guy" is not brilliant guy. From my understanding, the brilliant guy should clearly know when, what ,how to do the correct thing. The "correct" thing is which may suit for current business demand or for future business requirement.

dhimes 13y ago

The value of any given idea is really low I would agree if you mean average idea. Really great ideas are rare, difficult, and can change the world. The people who come up with those are rather special. And, unfortunately, rare, and almost never (in my somewhat limited experience) think of themselves as 'idea guys.' But this hivemind (nicely crurated by VCs- think that through) that ideas are worthless is very wrong. Unfortunately, discussions about it tend to start conflating ideas and execution- as, indeed, it is hard to separate them when you get down to it.

mattlutze 13y ago
Really great ideas also have low value. Even the most brilliant idea will have been had by countless people before it is known to the world. The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context.
- leoc 13y ago
  > The truly rare, difficult and world-changing is the realization (production, enactment, what have you) of a really great idea, and the luck of that realization occurring in the right context. Nonetheless that doesn't make the idea itself worth little (let alone nothing). By analogy, land is normally little use unless you put a building or infrastructure on it or start farming or mining it. And it's seriously expensive and difficult to do those things. But that doesn't make the value of land low. Land isn't just valuable, it's expensive in the most literal and straightforward you-pay-money-for-it sense, sometimes staggeringly so.
  - jib 13y ago
    Land is sort of a good example (there is scarcity involved, which makes it not a perfect analogy). Land doesn't have any intrinsic value. There are two reasons (unused) land has value: 1) Someone expects to be able to use it to create value 2) Someone expects that someone else will want to use it to create value in the future and they expect that scarcity will come into play allowing them to charge more for it in the future than it currently costs to buy. Land is only staggeringly expensive if either the value expected to be generated from 1) is exceptionally high or the expected value someone else will generate from it in 2) is exceptionally high. If those aren't in play, you can get land very cheaply, or even for free, or in extreme cases be paid to take over land (that usually only applies for contaminated land etc).
    - leoc 13y ago
      To a first approximation, the good ideas are precisely those which can be used to create a lot of value: they're the land in Shanghai. It's not clear to me in what sense of 'intrinsic value' such land or ideas would lack it while (say) a pile of high-quality bricks would not. Conversely, if ideas are worthless only in the sense that building materials or pig-iron are worthless then in any ordinary sense they are not worthless at all. Obviously ideas are less reliably scarce than land, because a number of people can have the same idea independently, and also because once another person hears your idea they can steal your fire without paying you, so it's difficult to trade an idea in a way that doesn't remove your ability to capture the value from it. But a high-quality and unobvious idea tends to occur to only a few people at any time, and the awkwardness of trying to do deals with them is far from rendering them valueless either. It's certainly not the case that good ideas are plentiful in the sense that if there one specific good idea to solve your problem but you don't think of or hear of it, then don't worry, there are lots of similarly good and suitable ideas lying around and one is almost certain to come to your attention soon. A different, and notable distinction between land and ideas is that people are usually better at recognising valuable land than good ideas, as Frank Aiken observed https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Howard_H._Aiken https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Howard_H._Aiken . This is one reason why some ability to "finish" (in terms of external circumstances as well as internal factors like temperament and character) is such a valuable accompaniment to having a good idea: it helps to have something relatively tangible (be it only a prototype) to force down others' throats.

hawleyal 13y ago

Agreed. However, this is not about the idea guy.

bryan_rasmussen 13y ago

There's a difference between an idea guy and a Proof of concept guy.

kghose 13y ago

I agree with you so completely. I have seen this all my life, especially with myself. The things I am proud of are not those brilliant ideas lying half finished somewhere. It is those imperfect, simple things that I finished but which work and which still work now and which are a continual source of pleasure.