Ask HN: Ideas are cheap link?
I'm trying to help some business students and am looking for a specific article I saw surface a few times. I'm in a time pinch, and searchyc and Google are failing me.
The article in question is around ideas are cheap, or ideas are commodities. There was a long list of existing ideas that single person came up with, and the point being the value is in the execution. It's not the Inc article not PG's /ideas.html article, but a list of ideas.
If you vaguely know what I'm talking about, I'd be happy to help clarify it. If you can share that link, I'd be very grateful.
Thanks, and sorry for the uninteresting post.
Edit 1: Thank you! I thought this would go past /newest and die with the spam. I appreciate the links, but the post/article I'm looking for was essentially "see how invaluable an idea is? I'll give you a list of x number of things that I think would be an interesting business." The article then goes on to provide a list of ideas.
6 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 20.6 ms ] threadhttp://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/08/ideas_are_just...
And here are some others (more links on the same subject within each article):
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100604/0954389689.shtml
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2010/01/cultivate-teams-not...
!BANZAI, BONSAI, BOND’S EYE! How to become a Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior, or the new millennium survival guide, o Camillo. by JUSTIN THYME 1. Remove the dams on the rivers. Super Drip Line Water Collect Ahora. Make your main goal in life to establish free flowing drinkable rivers that naturaly fertilize the ocean our main food source. Pound a stake into ober rivers. Stop worldwide oceanic fertilizer burn. DEEPFRY & FREEZEDRY Modern Ag. As practiced. See Spaceship rules on #22.
2. Don’t use the Black Stuff mined from the ground that powers the A/C and Alterating Current. Don’t even think about direct current and batrays. Plants are the only nuclear option. Windmills chop up the birds. Empower the people not the power Co. Force Global Blanket rapidliy escalating carbon tax, drop current use 90%, anticipate further cuts. Use money to fund sustainable stewardship.
3. Reestablish native Flora and Fuana from handpicked local seeds. Support your local power pollenators. Take the seeds out of doomsday storage and replace with pharmicuticles. Put over the counter stuff behind the counter.
4. Grow organic fruit, vegetables, nuts, herbs, roots and fungus, preferably heirloom. Eat more natural seafood. Horse is delicious. Beer is horse piss. Convert Champagne Room into Brew Ha Huas. Don’t drink fermented comodeity crops.
5. Abhore plastic, aluminum, metal, soap, perfume, degreasers, basically anything that can’t be put into a fish tank. Don’t be a miner. Reuse as many times as possible than RECYCLE. Metal is sacred.
6. Travel by Boat use paddles, oars, sails, or tramp steamers, ferries idea. Swim. Keep swimming join with another swimmer, have child, keep enjoying swimming… attempt back cross with forest elves idea. See what you get.
7. Walk if can’t do Above. Perhaps a bus or public transportation. HITCH HIKE. Stroll.
8. Riding a bicycle is an extremely advanced maneuver, I recommend salvaging one from the trash pile. In fact the dump is the new mine, wave to false idol that the ohms who work there taking notes built at the top. Look out for the skateboarders and hulahoop girls.
9. Learn to teleport. DON’T GET CAUGHT HOLDING A HYDROELECTRIC TURBINE, DAM CONSTRUCTING, WETLANDS DRAINING, OR RESIVOIR PERMIT PATENT OR GRAND FATHER CLAUSE. L.A. Orange Rice Racket Rangers. PANAMA CANAL and SUEZ CANAL EXCLUDED.
10. Don’t get caught with pre-sliced bread, it gets stale faster. Don’t be an Arnold Jonser. Quit praying for daily bread and banglindish for rice. Rethink the teach Girls that are scouts to sell there “cookies” idea.
11. Turn off the TV, realize you’re on universal TV already. Recycle your existing set into future Checkoff and Sulu reminder machines.
12. If you unfortunately own property, don’t fence it off. Grow buffaloes instead of steers idea. Teach dog to stay, perhaps grow food for it to. Get a pig or learn to eat dog.
13. *Don’t be a money lender or one of the investors in the destroy the planet project. Oysters and Honey are the new money.
14. Don’t take pharmaceuticals, or manufacture them under ecologically harmful manners. Use the ”good lords” minillimay processed herbs, funguses, and other plant and animals instead.
15. Do whatever you can to avoid getting a sun burn, especially on the neck. Listen to live music. Shun radioactive radio, and square unspun digital.
16. Wright your politrickons. Not to far to the left. Don’t try to buy or consume a “green” product to solve the consumption problem on this planet. Turn the lights, heat, and A/C off instead. GO BLUE AHORA. Quit praying to the A/C&D/C!
17. Learn not to vote for guys and gals named Washingtown, Lincon, Pierce, Fillmore, Harding, Hoover Raygun, Clintown, Isenhower, Nixon, W, Chainey, Gore, Obomba? , McCane… I’m sure you’re starting to see the light. Get the rails and used carpet ready to ride any unable polititions out of here.
18. Don’t look at life as a trial and tribulation. Even th...
!BANZAI, BONSAI, BOND’S EYE! How to become a Jedi Knight/Sith Warrior, or the new millennium survival guide, o Camillo. by JUSTIN THYME 1. Remove the dams on the rivers. Super Drip Line Water Collect Ahora. Make your main goal in life to establish free flowing drinkable rivers that naturaly fertilize the ocean our main food source. Pound a stake into ober rivers. Stop worldwide oceanic fertilizer burn. DEEPFRY & FREEZEDRY Modern Ag. As practiced. See Spaceship rules on #22.
2. Don’t use the Black Stuff mined from the ground that powers the A/C and Alterating Current. Don’t even think about direct current and batrays. Plants are the only nuclear option. Windmills chop up the birds. Empower the people not the power Co. Force Global Blanket rapidliy escalating carbon tax, drop current use 90%, anticipate further cuts. Use money to fund sustainable stewardship.
3. Reestablish native Flora and Fuana from handpicked local seeds. Support your local power pollenators. Take the seeds out of doomsday storage and replace with pharmicuticles. Put over the counter stuff behind the counter.
4. Grow organic fruit, vegetables, nuts, herbs, roots and fungus, preferably heirloom. Eat more natural seafood. Horse is delicious. Beer is horse piss. Convert Champagne Room into Brew Ha Huas. Don’t drink fermented comodeity crops.
5. Abhore plastic, aluminum, metal, soap, perfume, degreasers, basically anything that can’t be put into a fish tank. Don’t be a miner. Reuse as many times as possible than RECYCLE. Metal is sacred.
6. Travel by Boat use paddles, oars, sails, or tramp steamers, ferries idea. Swim. Keep swimming join with another swimmer, have child, keep enjoying swimming… attempt back cross with forest elves idea. See what you get.
7. Walk if can’t do Above. Perhaps a bus or public transportation. HITCH HIKE. Stroll.
8. Riding a bicycle is an extremely advanced maneuver, I recommend salvaging one from the trash pile. In fact the dump is the new mine, wave to false idol that the ohms who work there taking notes built at the top. Look out for the skateboarders and hulahoop girls.
9. Learn to teleport. DON’T GET CAUGHT HOLDING A HYDROELECTRIC TURBINE, DAM CONSTRUCTING, WETLANDS DRAINING, OR RESIVOIR PERMIT PATENT OR GRAND FATHER CLAUSE. L.A. Orange Rice Racket Rangers. PANAMA CANAL and SUEZ CANAL EXCLUDED.
10. Don’t get caught with pre-sliced bread, it gets stale faster. Don’t be an Arnold Jonser. Quit praying for daily bread and banglindish for rice. Rethink the teach Girls that are scouts to sell there “cookies” idea.
11. Turn off the TV, realize you’re on universal TV already. Recycle your existing set into future Checkoff and Sulu reminder machines.
12. If you unfortunately own property, don’t fence it off. Grow buffaloes instead of steers idea. Teach dog to stay, perhaps grow food for it to. Get a pig or learn to eat dog.
13. *Don’t be a money lender or one of the investors in the destroy the planet project. Oysters and Honey are the new money.
14. Don’t take pharmaceuticals, or manufacture them under ecologically harmful manners. Use the ”good lords” minillimay processed herbs, funguses, and other plant and animals instead.
15. Do whatever you can to avoid getting a sun burn, especially on the neck. Listen to live music. Shun radioactive radio, and square unspun digital.
16. Wright your politrickons. Not to far to the left. Don’t try to buy or consume a “green” product to solve the consumption problem on this planet. Turn the lights, heat, and A/C off instead. GO BLUE AHORA. Quit praying to the A/C&D/C!
17. Learn not to vote for guys and gals named Washingtown, Lincon, Pierce, Fillmore, Harding, Hoover Raygun, Clintown, Isenhower, Nixon, W, Chainey, Gore, Obomba? , McCane… I’m sure you’re starting to see the light. Get the rails and used carpet ready to ride any unable polititions out of here.
18. Don’t look at life as a trial and tribulation. Even th...
Google search:
"Ideas are easy execution is hard"
gives about 4,700 hits.
Google search:
"Ideas are easy" Kawasaki
yields as its first result:
http://www.forbes.com/2004/11/04/cx_gk_1104artofthestart.htm...
with
Art Of The Start
Ideas Are Easy, Implementation Is Hard
Guy Kawasaki, 11.04.04, 9:55 AM ET
So this attitude goes back at least to 2004.
At
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBvuirDPHKA&feature=playe...
is an interview by John Heilemann (New York Magazine) of columnist-correspondent venture partners John Doerr (KPCB) and Fred Wilson (Union Square) at the OreillyMedia, Web 2.0 Summit 2010: "Point of Control: Finance", November 15-17, San Francisco, CA.
There one of Doerr's remarks was:
"Ideas are easy. Execution is everything."
The YouTUBE video is from a link at Fred Wilson's blog AVC.com at
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/web2-interview-with-john-and...
which is Fred's thread on the interview.
On that thread at
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/11/web2-interview-with-john-and...
is a rebuttal to Doerr's claim. The core of the rebuttal is:
Bad ideas are easy, and plentiful, and then, sure, execution is difficult and everything. Good ideas are difficult and rare, and then execution can be routine, and the US is awash in the ability to do routine execution well.
There is a fundamental problem with any empirical, summary observation such as:
"Ideas are easy. Execution is everything."
In many areas, for a variety of reasons, some quite solid, 'averages' are important. So, in venture capital, we should note two points:
First, just looking at what entrepreneurs send Doerr, likely the empirical average would be
"Ideas are easy".
Second, since likely such a large fraction of what entrepreneurs try is from "easy" ideas, even if their expected return on investment (ROI) is much less than for good ideas, if look at successful startups, then maybe, still, will see that most of them started with easy ideas and then were successful mostly just from execution.
So, the fundamental problem is that in venture capital, such empirical averages are next to irrelevant: Doerr, etc. are looking for successes, and only a tiny fraction of what they see in their e-mail or even in successes in market are good guides to planning for success.
More generally, empirical data can be terrific stuff. Maybe fundamentally it could be enough for all of 'information', but from just a little consideration that would take some unreasonably large amount of data.
So, instead of just empirical data, we have other methods. E.g., from some fundamentals, we can engineer solutions that are new and quite solid.
In the history of applied science and engineering, there are many projects where initial ideas were presented just on paper, were carefully reviewed and seen to be quite solid, and then execution was both routine and successful.
Parts of our civilization are quite good at such reviewing. Maybe biomedical technology venture capital does such reviews, but it does appear that information technology venture capital essentially never does. So, a really good idea will get evaluated essentially only in the head of an entrepreneur, and everyone else will see at most just the execution.