[freshfunk]

To some degree both ideas and developers have become commodities. One doesn't need an MBA to come up with an idea and most people can learn some basic levels of programming.

I think the real value in both lines of expertise is execution.

In the MBAs case, it's not about how many different ideas they can come up with. It's whether they can distinguish which 1-3 ideas that a company must execute on in order to be successful before they run out of money, the competition beats them and/or reach the greatest market potential. Time and money is finite.. very finite.

In the developers case, can they execute quickly and still architect a scalable system, build for flexibility, pick the right technologies/platforms to use.