What Is An Idea Worth?

What Is An Idea Worth?(whydoeseverythingsuck.com)

30 points by whalliburton 17 years ago | 37 comments

ojbyrne 17 years ago |

Empirical results from digg.com (so far, based on public reports on techcrunch.com and from Sarah Lacy's book):

Idea (Kevin Rose): $3 million

Connections (especially VCs) (Jay Adelson): $2 million

Implementation (me): 0

But hey, as far as Kevin and Jay were concerned, I should have been happy to have a job.

bayareaguy 17 years ago |

Ideas by themselves aren't worth much until they are applied to a particular situation. They act as coefficients in a production equation - good ideas enhance production and poor ones diminish it.

unalone 17 years ago | |

I don't know. I'd argue with that: I think that the ability to have a good idea is one that some people lack to some degree, and it's one that's more valuable than any ability to execute.

The concept I had for my web site hatched about two years ago. I delayed on taking it and using it for that time because I was CERTAIN that somebody at one of the huge sites in the field would have implemented something like that. From my point of view, the problem was immense and there was only a single solution. Since then, demoing my concept pages to various people in the field, I've come to realize that while people can INSTANTLY grasp why the idea works, nobody even attempted to make the same logical approach to the problem as I did.

I think you see this contrast best with Jobs and Wozniak, and with the people who say that Jobs would have been nothing at all without Woz, that he was just a marketer. Strictly speaking, that's true, because Jobs needed somebody else to implement his ideas. However, looking at Jobs' career, that's always been the case. He didn't build NeXT himself: he got people to build it for him. Ditto the iPod, or the iTunes music store, or the iPhone, all of which were things that he purportedly conceptualized himself. I think that his career demonstrates that while Woz was the essential to creating Jobs' concept, that the idealist who came up with the ideas to begin with is the one whose talent is rarest and most valuable.

antirez 17 years ago |

Ideas are worthless: http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html

Of course they are not, just it does not exist "I could get rich with the right idea". It's a matter of passion, ideas, ability to create things, ability to be flexible and change what you are doing while you are doing it and so on.

After all the ability to adapt to the users requires a process of idea creation. So just "an idea" is worthless. But a whole team without an idea will eventually create one, it can go without one (not one, a good team will have a lot of ideas, both bad and good, and evolving, and so on).

Edit: proof that ideas are not worthless, people that have a lot of good ideas are more likely to get hired and earn more money. Good ideas are also a form of advertising, people with interesting ideas created blogs with a lot of readers, and so on. It's hard or impossible to create a market for ideas, but are not worthless at all. Also some kind of works like 'interior designer' sell ideas: paint this wall red, put this here and so on.

rgrieselhuber 17 years ago |

Glad to see someone questioning what has become conventional wisdom (and I have been guilty of repeating in the past) because a few popular writers made it so. There are some great points in the article and it prompted me to add a few thoughts that I've had on the subject.

If ideas were worthless, you wouldn't have the patent industry, intellectual property laws, royalty licensing, etc. These industries have their faults, to be sure, but there is also a legitimate use of IP laws to protect smaller startups from large corporations. And these laws exist because ideas are valuable.

The value of ideas becomes relevant to entrepreneurs when you have to decide whether to share an idea with a partner, potential investor or prospect client. My advisor tells me repeatedly "if you talk about one of your ideas with no NDA or similar mechanism in place, you have just given that person or corporation a gift. It's no longer solely yours."

Most of the large corporations I deal with understand when I request an NDA before getting into the details of any conversation. Most of the times I've heard or read about people refusing to sign NDAs is when entrepreneurs deal with VCs. They have their reasons for refusing to sign up front, which include the reasoning that they hear hundreds of ideas everyday and aren't going to take the time to sign an NDA for each one. A line of thinking that tends to derive from this is that there are no unique ideas anymore, but I don't think this is true and it shouldn't be taken for granted.

When dealing with VCs, it's even more important to understand that if you give too much away without signing that NDA, not only are you giving them a gift, you're giving it to someone who has both lots of money and strong connections to others with the technical ability and experience to act on it. And they don't think ideas are worthless.

icey 17 years ago |

Ideas and execution are like potential and kinetic energy. A nine ton boulder isn't going to kill you by sitting still.

unalone 17 years ago | |

But all too many people argue that the potential energy is entirely worthless, and that with enough hard work you can do well without having an original idea.

13ren 17 years ago |

ideas vs. information:

  - "inside information"
  - info that can be worked out, but is not obvious (scanning the numbers got Warren Buffett started)
  - knowing where the gold/oil is
  - a new method that is cheaper/better than before
  - an opportunity that's not obvious

maxklein 17 years ago |

An idea as it is first conceived off, is not much good until it is tested. Not implemented, but tested. Let's say you lived in the age before airplanes and you had an idea for some type of engine that would make a plane take off. If you sat somewhere and built this engine for 2 years and then stuck it in a plane to test if it works, that plane won't fly.

Your initial idea is going to change as you realise and learn more things about the area you are trying to realise something in. The plane engine needs a lot of tweaking from whatever concept you came up with till it can fly.

Same with a business idea, but for a business idea, the right way to do so is to place it in front of lots of people and just keep trying till you get it right.

vaksel 17 years ago |

to me the whole concept that the idea is worthless has to do with the fact that until you build it, you really have nothing. It isn't about actual value that gets placed on the idea.

davidw 17 years ago |

Ideas are "worthless" because it's difficult or impossible to create a market for them:

http://journal.dedasys.com/articles/2007/04/26/ideas-are-wor...

diego 17 years ago | |

Perhaps it's difficult because it's inherently hard to completely transfer ownership of an idea. Suppose you have a great idea and you have a track record of great ideas to back it up. You offer to sell me your idea. Maybe the idea is the key to solving a famous mathematical problem or a novel approach to cure some disease. Problems:

1 - How do I know that you have a great idea if you don't tell me the idea first, in which case you can't sell it anymore.

2 - If you "sell" me the idea you still have it, and you can sell it to others (just like software).

That doesn't mean that ideas are worthless. It is possible to have an 'aha!' insight that is extremely valuable to you. There are lots of things that are extremely valuable to a person (meaning that you would pay a lot to keep them if you had to) but completely worthless others because they can't use them.

davidw 17 years ago | | |

Yes, that's more or less what I said in the linked posting: ideas are non-excludable goods. To some degree you are right that they aren't rivalrous like physical objects are, but they do lose their value when they are widespread. A social-news-voting site isn't that hot an idea any more. It was a few years ago.

13ren 17 years ago | | |

1. NDA or trust

2. exclusivity clause

One role of patents is they conceptually wrap up an idea, so you have a "thing" to sell (know-how must be supplied too - you're hired).

trapper 17 years ago |

Most people never action their idea because they are scared of being wrong. Execution is like a rollercoaster of fail & adjust cycles, which transform your idea into money.

The original idea if not taken on the failcoaster is worthless.

13ren 17 years ago |

In support of the article's "actionable idea", Edison's quote on genius being 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration was referring to invention - necessarily done in private, if it's to be patentable.

whalliburton 17 years ago |

A good attack on the "release early and often" process.

unalone 17 years ago | |

I don't necessarily think that it is. I think that "early and often" still works if you've got a brilliant idea, since it lets you refine things. I think of it like early drafts to a novel.

That being said, it's an EXCELLENT attack on the people who truly think ideas are worthless. And I think that's a mindset that matters a lot.

shard 17 years ago |

I kind of see Fermat's Last Theorem as an idea without an execution plan.

mattmaroon 17 years ago |

$9.72

LPTS 17 years ago |

It's so funny watching you guys talk about how worthless ideas are. Maybe the relationship between starting shitty web companies, obsessing about hits, ads, and freemium accounts, and thinking ideas are worthless tells us more about the kinds of thinkers who start shitty web companies then what ideas are worth.

Most ideas suck. Those ideas are worthless. A few ideas are very valuable. Those ideas are the things that change the world. Just because all the ideas in your network are worthless, doesn't mean all ideas are worthless. The idea that ideas are worthless is worthless, it omits relevant extreme cases.

I think what people mean when they say ideas are worthless is that they don't have the vision or intelligence to sort through a pile of ideas and sort out the good few from the worthless many.

fallentimes 17 years ago | |

I think what they mean is: business ideas are worthless without execution.

Edit: Added "business", which is what I meant in the first place. Sorry for not clarifying.

huhtenberg 17 years ago | | |

An idea without an execution plan is worthless. Having an actionable plan adds a lot value, which may or may not be realized via an execution.

qqq 17 years ago | | |

Ideas are worthless for making money without execution.

LPTS 17 years ago | | |

in starting web companies maybe. Not in a lot of other fields, including many fields where the real value is to be created.

trapper 17 years ago | |

Can you name a few example ideas that changed the world, that would have been valuable without execution?

LPTS 17 years ago | | |

Strictly speaking, I don't need to. With just logic:

Consider: "Ideas are worthless without execution."

Assume it is true. It's an idea, so it refers to itself, and it is only worthwhile with execution. Since it is not executable, then if it is true, it is worthless.

Assume it is false. It is worthless, or only worthwhile inso far as it's falsehood is useful.

So, "Ideas are worthless without execution" is itself worthless or false and useful.

In no (possible) case, is "Ideas are worthless without execution" both true and worthwhile.

I don't need examples. I just need logic.

Allocator2008 17 years ago |

That is a great insight. An idea is not just some "eureka!" moment. It is a synthesis of little ideas into an implementable concept. Case in point: genetic algorithms. These are based upon Darwin's principle of natural selection, which itself, the memeticist Susan Blackmore has called "the best idea anybody ever had". But sucessful implementation of the idea of natural selection by way of genetic algorithms means finding a real world business application for the principles involved, no easy task. Finding the right business niche for a mathematical idea is half the game.

*The Fountainhead</> says it best regarding great ideas:

"Thousands of years ago, the first man discovered how to make fire. He was probably burned at the stake he had taught his brothers to light. He was considered an evildoer who had dealt with a demon mankind dreaded. But thereafter men had fire to keep them warm, to cook their food, to light their caves. He had left them a gift they had not conceived and he had lifted darkness off the earth."

"Lifting darkness from the earth" - that is what entrepreneurship is all about really I think.

LPTS 17 years ago | |

I don't think all ideas are worthless. But I do think all ideas in the Fountainhead are worthless.

- "inside information" - info that can be worked out, but is not obvious (scanning the numbers got Warren Buffett started) - knowing where the gold/oil is - a new method that is cheaper/better than before - an opportunity that's not obvious