| Ideas which are 'actionable pieces of intellectual leverage' are actually massively underrated, and unfortunately grouped alongside mere daydreams. If you happen to have a collection of design/market/engineering insights that could actually inform a working solution, you'd be a fool to just dump them into the public domain as free 'ideas'. Executing the creation of a factory to produce lightbulbs is comparatively valueless, compared to inventing the first lightbulb. It's not only easier, it's also less important to society. New ideas are actually incredibly important, and they might even be getting harder to find [0]. As Thiel said in 'Zero to One' [1]: "Every great business is built around a secret that’s hidden from the outside." Unless you have incredibly deep pockets or a monopoly, ideas are likely to be the only thing protecting you from your competition. As an aside: the money isn't in execution, or in innovative ideas, but in the creation of economic moats [2]. [0] http://www-leland.stanford.edu/~chadj/IdeaPF.pdf [1] https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Notes-Startups-Future/dp/B00... [2] https://news.morningstar.com/classroom2/course.asp?docId=144... |