I am a serial idea writer and I have to agree with the author. Ideas are inherently valuable, maybe not financially, but they're valuable to have and valuable to society to share. It makes me angry that people actually believe ideas are inherently worthless. Or that without any code or implementation they're worthless. It's a meme that needs to die. It's like having your cake and eating it too. Here's a free idea for…
I think the ideas being worthless meme is an over-correction of the person that thinks the idea is all of the value and wants to hire an engineer to 'just do the implementation' for little reward. Ideas have value, and someone who can unite people with a clear vision can do incredible things but the implementation is a big part of the actual difficulty and usually you have to update the idea as you learn more from th…
If we look at this in a strict sense then those are implementations as well, just theoretical ones.
I consider a scientific pager, a thorough technical specification or a rich, well-structured design document not 'just' ideas anymore. So in a sense those examples actually don't relativize your point, but strengthen it.
Ideas are usually much more vague, they point in a general direction. Another interesting fact about them is that they are often incremental, small and pragmatic, but they are just as much ideas as the big, exciting ones.
Smaller, more practical ideas are my personal bread and butter. They also need to be taken apart, composed into a sound plan and implemented, but they don't ask for much.