| I think the real reason people say 'ideas are cheap' - is because in the grand scheme of things - an idea is not worth much. An idea on it's own, is just an idea - without a really good execution / team behind it - it has little to no value. Only once a good idea has been executed really well, by a good team - does that idea suddenly have value. Generally the 'proportional' effort of actually executing the idea (in time / money / resources) - compared to the effort in generating the 'idea' - makes just having the 'idea' cheap. This is not to say all ideas should be valued equally - there are both good ideas and bad ideas, but no idea will provide value (or have much worth) without it being executed really well. (Hence someone can think of something like 'uber' or 'facebook' - relatively simple concepts to conceive as an idea - but without huge efforts in execution - they would not have become as valuable as they are). What I mostly notice is that people who have never tried to execute an idea (or don't even know where to start) - are the ones who generally value ideas the highest. e.g. someone may say 'I have an amazing idea, but I won't tell anyone in case they steal it'... or someone else may say something like 'I had the idea for facebook before facebook existed'. In both of these examples - the person has valued their 'idea' as much as the end execution. |
A truly good ideas is valuable in the same way that great team is valuable before they start working. No one says a team of world class developers is worthless before they start on a project and we should take the same approach to world class ideas. Bring them together and you have enormous value.