However, it's not altogether clear just what execution means if it is necessarily divorced from ideas. Aren't all new features, enhancements and marketing campaigns driven by ideas and then carried out by technicians? Or can successful execution be attributed simply to coders writing code? By this view (which, granted, is an exaggeration) success can be achieved by simply filling a room full of contractors and assuming they will work something out.

Rather than being at odds, ideas and execution seem more like mutual components of the division of labor: one cannot work without the other, and both are participants of every stage of the process. However, it doesn't follow from this fact that ideas and execution are equally responsible for success. I view a venture's success primarily as a function of consistently applied creativity, imagination and discipline. Luck is a necessary too, but certainly cannot be executed.

While I recognize the importance of ideas and technical execution, I would argue that vision and imagination are scarcer, more valuable resources than technical proficiency and practical know how. After all, development needs can be fulfilled by contractors in a pinch, but the same cannot be said for the role of a visionary -- a fact may explain why Apple continues to compensate Jonathan Ives so handsomely when his pay could be used alternatively to hire dozens of young hacker savants and electrical engineers.

I agree with you that ideas are needed throughout the process. In fact one of the points that certain people here seem unable to grasp is that software development is itself a creative activity that requires not only linear logical thinking but also continuous inspiration to find a good path through the solution space. It is not the equivalent of hammering nails to carry out someone else's grand design.

Are you a coder? Where is your billion dollar application then? If one is so capable of building something, why haven't you built XYZ and sold it for many millions already?

If developers are so much more valuable than ideas - why isnt every single developer building something amazing?

Why is there so much crappy software, so many crappy businesses? -- I bet you'd say "well, it was a bad idea!" -- but if there is some amazingly successful company - you would say "Well, clearly that is amazing execution"

The fact is, rather, that idea folk need devs - and devs need idea folk.

I am a technical person, I design large systems and networks - but am not a developer. I am an idea guy to my developer friends - and we are always bouncing ideas back and forth.

To further your example - you are saying the architect who makes the drawings are worthless and its the contractor who pounds the nail that is the real builder.

Because simply building something doesn't equal success. Other factors are involved, such as potential need for capital, marketing etc.

I would not say ideas are worth zero -- at least not without qualifying/explaining that statement. [1] I believe it's more accurate to say ideas are worth very little -- usually much less than the idea's creator thinks it is -- relative to everything else needed for project success. And many ideas do get built out into existence, and flop, where we see that generally 90% of startups fail.

The confusion as I see it with this debate is "idea people" having the misconception that a great idea equals success, and only needs the product to be built. That's usually not the case. And the problem here is that there is zero risk in having an idea, but elevated risk in every other part of growing a potential business.

As to the importance of execution, well, you can have an average or sub-par project executed extremely well be very valuable and profitable, but an idea without any execution will always be worth zero no matter how great its potential.

I do believe ideas can have value. Highly valuable ideas are ones that are novel and provide great advantage upon execution in the marketplace. These are generally rare. I can only think of a couple in the tech space over the past decade: the page ranking model of Google, and the video sharing model of YouTube.

[1] An idea is worth zero in the dollar value sense because if the idea never leaves the brain of the creator to be introduced into the world it never introduces any value into the world, and remains only an idea.

If developers are so much more valuable than ideas - why isnt every single developer building something amazing?

I find this a horribly unfair comparison. One can easily sit and dream up 100 ideas in a day, but one can't develop 100 projects in a day. If one could do such effectively I'm sure that you would find many more developers reaping rewards from their actions. Success is often about a hit / miss ratio.

On the other hand developers can generate value fairly easily. Let's say a developer decides to go out and build websites for local businesses. Again, nothing revolutionary here, yet there is certainly value that can be created by executing and with near limitless potential. Execution is what pays dividends. And as one would expect, it's what is hardest.

Exactly, so then - if that one idea - which the dev could put together using his skills were the billion dollar one - then the IDEA was what was so valuable. Not the fact that he had development skills.

I just cant believe that ideas are worthless at all. They are worth what you can make of them - but they are never worthless.

You can develop 100 projects, but you also cant develop 1 project without an idea behind it. And then, its the value of the idea, the resultant product or service that has value.

I just cant believe that ideas are worthless at all.

I've already said above I don't believe ideas are always totally worthless.

...but they are never worthless.

I disagree. I can generate a list of many totally worthless startup ideas fairly quickly.

You still seem to be placing a lot of value in ideas, as if they are the main thing that determines the success of a project. I fundamentally disagree with that, and as evidence of that most successful projects end up looking different than they did when they first started out. I also feel almost like you are suggesting developers are helpless until an "idea person" comes along. Again, I disagree with that. Anyone can have an idea, even great idea, including developers.

The reasons already given - any execution HARD. Executing correctly is even harder. Executing correctly and better than the next guy is even harder still.

To further your example - you are saying the architect who makes the drawings are worthless and its the contractor who pounds the nail that is the real builder.

Not at all, in fact the architect is part of the execution chain. The just idea part would be the thousands of people that may drive past a river each day and think 'wow, a bridge would be great here.' The architect takes that idea and executes.

I don't think that such a person could have a deep enough understanding of the technology to do a good job performing the tasks he purports to.

As for likening developers to "contractors who pounds the nail" that tells me that you have very little understanding of the nature of software development.

Don't sysadmins and network admins design large systems and networks? Sorry, but programmers don't have a monopoly on technical complexity.

> As for likening developers to "contractors who pounds the nail" that tells me that you have very little understanding of the nature of software development.

Is that not the point of the argument he is arguing against though? It seems to be saying that "Developers pound the nail, and pounding the nail is the most important part".

Actually we pretty much do. These days anything really complex can only be effectively analyzed and managed with code. That's why biologists, economists, political scientists and even journalists are finding they need coding skills to do their jobs (which isn't to say that coding skills alone are sufficient, domain knowledge is essential as well).

As for sysadmins I've heard it's pretty difficult for people without coding skills to get sysadmin jobs at cutting edge companies like Google. One big reason is that to perform those jobs efficiently you need to be able to automate tasks, and that requires coding in some form. I also think that having worked with the API's and having implemented at least some sort of semi-non-trivial piece of code, say a simple network client/server pair gives one a depth of understanding of the technology that really can't be obtained in any other way.

I have 3 exits, one to Hotels.com and one to TUI travel. I am a bad example for that one. None of the companies we built where revolutionary just a good team with good timing.

I think a lot of this boils down to opportunity and guts. While everyone can have a billion-dollar idea, and many of them could execute parts of it (the coding, or the marketing, or whatever).

It takes a special set of circumstances and personality traits to actually make a billion-dollar idea into a billion-dollar business.

This is easily demonstrated by the startup community itself. How many homeruns are there? How many flops?

;)

You know, this is one of those cliches that lives on simply because everyone keeps repeating it. Everyone can have an idea they believe is worth billions of dollars, true. And a billion dollar idea is worthless without billion dollar execution. But don't let this fool you into believing that great ideas are any less rare.

And besides that, my experience is that great ideas drive great execution. I mean, I personally find it harder to execute an idea I don't like than one I love. And I hardly believe that I'm unique.

Small yet vital nuance in meaning.

Also there is a statistical bias here in that one can only know their idea was a billion-dollar idea when it becomes a billion-dollar execution. If everything doesn't line up, you might still have had a billion-dollar idea, you just couldn't prove it.

Now you seem to be agreeing with (or at least aren't arguing) the ultimate conclusion that I come to in my last comment which is that good ideas are rare. Whether anyone can have them or not is kind of a moot point if very few people actually do have them don't you think?

If good execution is hard to come by and good ideas are hard to come by, then wouldn't that mean that both are important things to worry about?

1. Everyone is capable of having a billion-dollar idea

2. Not everyone will actually have such an idea

3. Such ideas are still a dime a dozen because even if only 10% of the world population has such an idea, that's still 700 million such ideas. That's a lot.

4. It's difficult to prove that an idea was a billion-dollar idea and the only way of proving is likely to either execute very well, or someone else executing on the same/similar-enough idea

Let's try to do some off-the-cuff statistics.

Let's assume the average person has 1 useful idea per week. And the average worldwide life expectancy is about 50 years. That makes 2608 useful ideas in their lifetime. Let's say a hundreth of a percent of those ideas are billion dollars ideas. That gives us roughly 3 billion-dollar ideas for every human in their lifetime.

So that's not very much on an individual basis, but using the same stats for the world population gives us roughly 7 million billion-dollar ideas every week.

You're attributing the ability/capability and access to requisite resources to people who will never have such access/resources.

So, even looking at the overall population of the bay area - with the high % of tech people we do, it still is only a fraction of the ~7 million people here.

So, lets assume that 20% of the 7M people in the valley are in tech and actually pursuing this billion dollar idea - and I still think your assumptions are off. with 1.4 million people in tech, we certainly are not seeing as many ideas as you would suggest.

And in my arguments I said that the having the opportunity and/or the right set of circumstances to execute on the idea is crucial to actually, you know, executing on the idea. It does not affect the value of the idea itself as a billion-dollar idea, just whether you'll ever be able to prove it or not.