Most ideas, like most anything, are derivative and mediocre. We tend to get a bit too excited about the prospect of game-changing ideas. It leads us to over-pra

Most ideas, like most anything, are derivative and mediocre. We tend to get a bit too excited about the prospect of game-changing ideas. It leads us to over-praise the merely interesting in embarrassing ways. Personally, I think we would do well to lower our sights a bit. No golfer specializes in holes-in-one; no baseball player only trains to hit home runs. Similarly, we might do well to focus less on the disruptive big ideas (which too often turn out to be merely over-hyped mediocre ideas), and more on building useful, elegant, cost-effective systems. This will let us do well with merely decent opportunities, and sets us up to really deliver when by chance or talent we come upon one of the great ones.