Ideas Matter

The main reason I (and others) say "Ideas Don't Matter" is because there is an abundance of ideas. Too many people have too many ideas, and everyone thinks their ideas are great.

This Silicon Valley 'mantra' (in my opinion) is valid in order to teach people the importance of execution.

It'll drive you mad if you try to take it too far. It's a shortcut to a more complex concept, not a rule.

There's an abundance of people too. You wouldn't say people don't matter.

You can teach the importance of execution by emphasizing execution.E.g. two teams with the same good idea, one executed and the other one didn't. You don't need to devalue other factors in order to make a point.

I was going to say this as well. You need soil and water to plant crops but in the desert water is more valuable than the soil because its the harder commodity to obtain.

In business solid execution is harder to get than new ideas, so it's true that having a good idea is important making it work is more so.

The article says:

"For Google, it was the idea of PageRank. Did search engines exist before? Sure they did. But it was that little spark of innovation, coupled with years of execution that got Google going. In fact even Google “borrowed” it’s idea of search advertising from what used to be called Goto.com and then became Overture.com. (Kudos to Bill Gross here for his role in Goto.com). That is a perfect example of how the idea mattered, but it also needed the execution to make it flourish."

Which I think undermines the who 'ideas are important' theme. What was important about PageRank was the insight that it was an analog for social intent, and that social intent provided a useful ordering out of an otherwise random set of documents. Using that insight to design as document retrieval system which scaled and could operated cheaply enough made the insight useful.

Its all mental gymnastics however until you put your money down. Then it becomes real. And its really hard to hand a check to someone you don't think can actually produce the thing they are talking about.

Half (or more) of the problem with ideas is the vetting process. You need to vet your ideas. Very frequently, as stated in the article, some ideas are "dead on arrival". This is because founders don't have the proper frame of reference, they're expertise is lacking, or they've made some concept framed early on their baby - that is, unable to let go. Ideas need to be vetted. Like getting your first customers, in whatever you do, you need approval from something or someone to know that something is there, and you need it fast.

You can't be in your basement grinding with one other person for four months just to find out you misappropriated your customer base, or the problem your software solves, only to find out there's nobody has that problem, nobody cares, or some amalgamation of that and many other factors.

I see this elsewhere as well. People want to be a model their whole life but never had a hope from the getgo. They want to be an architect but their frame of reference is so off they'll never have a chance. Not saying that work can't make up for a lot of it, but I'll never in the NBA. Talent dictated that. There are several other dictators that create the same boundaries as well.