So, since ideas don't "count", we should shut down the USPTO and tell the US DoD to quit classifying ideas for, say, stealth, laser gyroscopes for inertial navigation, drag-free satellites for better GPS, a lot in sonar, radar, and spread spectrum, etc. And we should tell the lawyers that when someone steals a trade secret idea they have stolen nothing that "counts".
Moreover, we should shut down the funding for NSF and NIH for more ideas.
And we should shut down the peer-reviewed journals of original research since they publish just ideas with usually nothing on "execution".
In particular, we should do away with the Ph.D. dissertation since its usual role now is to present an idea that is "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication" and where the usual criteria for publication are "new, correct, and significant" which must all be empty since ideas don't "count".
We should shutdown the Nobel prizes since they are given just for ideas that don't "count".
For Newton's second law F = ma, we should quit teaching that because it is just an idea which doesn't "count". Similarly for Einstein's equivalence of mass and energy in E = mc^2 -- doesn't "count".
For the Craig Venter idea of chopping up DNA, sequencing the pieces, and reassembling the pieces in a computer, an idea that got the sequencing of DNA done years faster, we should have ignored that.
For the idea of Reed-Solomon error correcting codes crucial to letting CDs work, it doesn't "count" either.
For public key cryptosystems, their role in Kerberos and authentication and in electronic finance, we should forget about that, too, since they are just ideas which don't "count".
People should quit looking for an idea to settle the question P versus NP since the idea, even if found, would not "count".
And the idea of using tungsten in a glass with high vacuum as an incandescent electric light would not "count". The tungsten idea came from the English chemist Swan, and the needed much better vacuum pump came from Germany(?). Then Edison could give up on baking hair to make carbon filaments and get on with electric lighting.
But, more is claimed: Apparently all ideas are equivalent, that is. don't "count:, and only execution counts. So, might as well start with a bad idea.
If start with a bad idea, then, yes, execution is about all that will "count". Just what is it about bad ideas the author likes so much?
This article is just another attempt of many to run down ideas by apparently someone with less than a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue about what an 'idea' really is and what a good idea is how valuable it can be.
In fact, with a good idea, execution is routine and the idea was likely difficult to find and is about all that does "count".
There can be reasons for running down good ideas:
(1) They can be new and disrupt things.
(2) They tend to be difficult to find.
(3) In school in, say, math and physics, being able to find the good ideas needed to work the problems can be difficult and hurt the feelings of people who fail to find such ideas.
(4) In venture capital, it might be a good initial negotiating position to claim that "Ideas are easy. Execution is everything." and "Ideas are plentiful." in order to tell an entrepreneur with a good idea that what he has is easy and plentiful and nothing.
E.g., one of the most important steps forward in civilization, technology, and economic productivity was Euclid's 'Elements' on plane geometry, especially the Pythagorean theorem, e.g., crucial for trigonometry, Fourier theory, Nyquist sampling, JPGs, MPEGs, and music CDs! But, for anything so important we'd want a solid proof. All that takes is a good idea. So maybe the author would like to find such a proof, alone, without books, Google, or input from others.
I don't think he said they don't count, I think he said they won't make you money, which is different. Many of the ideas you listed were invented by one person and then capitalized upon by another. This doesn't mean the idea wasn't important, just that the person who got rich was the one with the implementation.
Yes he did. He said that execution is what "counts". The way he wrote this it is fair to conclude that he meant that execution is ALL that counts so that nothing else counts and in particular ideas don't count. He was careful never to admit that an idea "counts". He's being polemical, and you are bending over backwards to be literal and generous.
You realize that an idea can be important, but he didn't want to admit that.
That execution or implementation is important for making money with the idea is also not really true: That's why we have the USPTO. Patent licensing is big business, big bucks, and sometimes there's not a lot of 'execution' needed.
Yes, of course, in the usual situation, to get the big bucks have to 'implement' and 'execute'. We know that. Anyone out of the first grade knows this. What he wanted to imply was that execution "counts" so that the idea doesn't -- he wanted to remove the possibility of a good idea. Dumb.
I fully assure you, find a good idea for a one pill solution to any cancer, and the idea will be about all that "counts" and execution will be a very easy case of routine -- have some big pharma company do the trials, put the pills in the bottles, and hire the security guards to push away the desperate customers.
"Many of the ideas you listed were invented by one person and then capitalized upon by another. This doesn't mean the idea wasn't important, just that the person who got rich was the one with the implementation."
Sure: We are agreeing. E.g., without Swan and his idea about tungsten, poor Edison would have been pulling hairs to bake from himself, his employees, his wife, dogs, cats, etc. all as a waste of time. Similarly for the vacuum pump. Yes, I would hope that Swan would have gotten the big bucks, but he didn't. Still, the idea was crucial. Edison would have made no bucks at all from lights without such an idea. Or, just tell Edison to "execute": Right! Try to sell lights that last about 40 hours! "Come on Tom, just EXECUTE! Quit wasting time looking for ideas. EXECUTE! Ideas are easy and plentiful (J. Doerr). Execution is everything (J. Doerr) and all that 'counts'!".
In my project, I started with an idea. I'm attacking a problem nearly every Internet user in the world has and knows that they have. So far all the solutions 'executed' just suck, about like a 40 hour light. Maybe 500 million Internet users would take the problem seriously enough actually to want and use a good solution. Maybe 50 million would become really "engaged" (Fred Wilson, AVC.com). A few million will like the solution enough to become 'addicted' as is common in games (although my project is not for a 'game').
The crucial obstacle to a solution is a good idea, just the idea, just "How to do that". That is, the reason the current solutions suck is closely analogous to Edison not knowing about tungsten.
How to do that ain't easy to discover. What's needed is a good idea not easy to find. With the idea, the rest is routine. If others could find the idea for a good solution, say, think of tungsten, then the problem would have been solved long ago. Net, the idea is nearly all that really matters.
Well, I invented and have the idea. No, it ain't computer science or artificial intelligence or machine learning or some heuristic or any of that nonsense. Instead the solution is some original applied math with some advanced prerequisites. Nearly no one in computer science, including the chaired profs, has the prerequisites and certainly hasn't done my original work.
So, what am I doing? Today it's struggling with some UI/UX details and ASP.NET, and I'm a beginner with ASP.NET and going slowly. Thousands of others here on HN could take my idea and core code (I have the software for the idea in good shape) and totally blow me out of the water on the rest of the software. But, I've kept the idea confidential! So, I've got time for my slow progress with ASP.NET! Again, 99 44/100% of what matters is just the idea.
So, right, I'm not giving away the idea, and my intention is to keep the idea confidential, in software well protected in a server farm and get the big bucks for myself.
A "discovery" is not a special case of an "idea"? That is, you are claiming that ideas necessarily don't build on each other, that is, are not 'cumulative'?
Here is the hidden point in this discussion: The article and much of information technology entrepreneurship want to say that the 'idea' is some, say, Facebook for dog owners or eHarmony for cat lovers. So, the 'idea' is some description from 40,000 feet up of some business, say, category. Maybe the idea is an Internet site for printing and sending via FedEx personalized paper napkins for big picnics. It seems to be such 'ideas' that J. Doerr finds flooding his e-mail inbox and that lead him to conclude that "ideas are easy" and "plentiful" and "execution is everything". Doerr, and the article, are not thinking of tungsten for electric lights, Reed-Solomon codes for CDs, or F = ma as 'ideas' or any such ideas as important for business. That's DUMB.
You are being fooled: The article was deliberately ambiguous.
What I said is fully appropriate: "plentiful, easy, worthless, and don't 'count'" as a statement of one of the claims of the article. That is, the article flatly stated that:
"It is the manner in which ideas are
executed that counts."
So, the execution "counts". So, he is saying that the ideas don't "count". That is, what he was saying is usually interpreted as 'execution is ALL that counts'.
The quote you extracted is even self-contradictory: In his first sentence he says that ideas are not "enough" so admits that they are necessary but in his second sentence is back to saying that it is the 'execution' that "counts" essentially saying that the ideas are not even necessary.
He's just spinning nasty stuff, and trying to write in ways that are slightly difficult to debunk.
But his point is quite clear: He believes that ideas are worthless, that execution is everything, that is, all that "counts".
Worst of all, he omits any concept that there can be bad ideas and good ideas.
Basically he wants to run down ideas.
As I explain, and as in the link I gave, this running down ideas is common in business.
My point about "equivalent" is a reasonable implication to draw since to him execution "counts" and, thus, ideas don't and, thus, are equivalent.
That is, what he was saying is usually interpreted as 'execution is ALL that counts'.
Again, as the article clearly states, "Having a great idea is not enough. It is the manner in which ideas are executed that counts." The idea is clearly mentioned here as part of the formula.
I'm sorry, but you're just making bizarre leaps from what the article said.
You have a serious emotional block here. I addressed exactly this pair of sentences.
Read what I actually wrote.
Or yet again, push down your emotional whatever and just pay a little attention: The second sentence, given how the English language works, is essentially saying that execution is ALL that "counts" so that necessarily the idea doesn't count. So the second sentence contradicts the first. He's writing garbage, and you are reading into it what you want.
"It is the manner in which ideas are executed that counts."
"Ideas don’t make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does."
Somehow I remember seeing this nonsense before:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287728
So, since ideas don't "count", we should shut down the USPTO and tell the US DoD to quit classifying ideas for, say, stealth, laser gyroscopes for inertial navigation, drag-free satellites for better GPS, a lot in sonar, radar, and spread spectrum, etc. And we should tell the lawyers that when someone steals a trade secret idea they have stolen nothing that "counts".
Moreover, we should shut down the funding for NSF and NIH for more ideas.
And we should shut down the peer-reviewed journals of original research since they publish just ideas with usually nothing on "execution".
In particular, we should do away with the Ph.D. dissertation since its usual role now is to present an idea that is "an original contribution to knowledge worthy of publication" and where the usual criteria for publication are "new, correct, and significant" which must all be empty since ideas don't "count".
We should shutdown the Nobel prizes since they are given just for ideas that don't "count".
For Newton's second law F = ma, we should quit teaching that because it is just an idea which doesn't "count". Similarly for Einstein's equivalence of mass and energy in E = mc^2 -- doesn't "count".
For the Craig Venter idea of chopping up DNA, sequencing the pieces, and reassembling the pieces in a computer, an idea that got the sequencing of DNA done years faster, we should have ignored that.
For the idea of Reed-Solomon error correcting codes crucial to letting CDs work, it doesn't "count" either.
For public key cryptosystems, their role in Kerberos and authentication and in electronic finance, we should forget about that, too, since they are just ideas which don't "count".
People should quit looking for an idea to settle the question P versus NP since the idea, even if found, would not "count".
And the idea of using tungsten in a glass with high vacuum as an incandescent electric light would not "count". The tungsten idea came from the English chemist Swan, and the needed much better vacuum pump came from Germany(?). Then Edison could give up on baking hair to make carbon filaments and get on with electric lighting.
But, more is claimed: Apparently all ideas are equivalent, that is. don't "count:, and only execution counts. So, might as well start with a bad idea.
If start with a bad idea, then, yes, execution is about all that will "count". Just what is it about bad ideas the author likes so much?
This article is just another attempt of many to run down ideas by apparently someone with less than a weak little hollow hint of a tiny clue about what an 'idea' really is and what a good idea is how valuable it can be.
In fact, with a good idea, execution is routine and the idea was likely difficult to find and is about all that does "count".
There can be reasons for running down good ideas:
(1) They can be new and disrupt things.
(2) They tend to be difficult to find.
(3) In school in, say, math and physics, being able to find the good ideas needed to work the problems can be difficult and hurt the feelings of people who fail to find such ideas.
(4) In venture capital, it might be a good initial negotiating position to claim that "Ideas are easy. Execution is everything." and "Ideas are plentiful." in order to tell an entrepreneur with a good idea that what he has is easy and plentiful and nothing.
E.g., one of the most important steps forward in civilization, technology, and economic productivity was Euclid's 'Elements' on plane geometry, especially the Pythagorean theorem, e.g., crucial for trigonometry, Fourier theory, Nyquist sampling, JPGs, MPEGs, and music CDs! But, for anything so important we'd want a solid proof. All that takes is a good idea. So maybe the author would like to find such a proof, alone, without books, Google, or input from others.