Paul Buchheit - Latest Comments in Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

F F — Sun, 12 Aug 2012 23:24:48 -0000

* what you are good at - what everyone is doing

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Audran Guerard — Thu, 14 Jul 2011 06:00:00 -0000

Hmmm thoughtful indeed,

I think ideas are marketable...
When you look at creative house like IDEO... they are selling ideas.

You can also look at Advertisement Agencies... their "product" is purely made out of statement... ideas... to help define a product. Try to run a marketing agency without creative people.... FAIL!

Art... isn't that the purest form of communicating ideas, concept or message?
and yeah Art is marketable.

How about Designer? Fashion, furnitures... they are selling their ideas.

The problem being, ideas become good ideas, only when there is a successful product following it. People having trouble deciding which idea to run with. They're difficult to market because everyone think they have good ideas...or simply doubt when one is proposed.

Steve Job didn't believe making computer animation was a good idea, until the release of Toy Story. He somehow got manipulated in doing it.

Cheers,

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Emanuel — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:23:07 -0000

Amazingly accurate and a pure joy to read. Thank you!
From someone who is climbing his second mountain and has realized that the problem is there are too many good ideas and so little time. Focus is key.

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Sleep.FM: The Social Alarm Clo — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:22:32 -0000

Agreed and we(http://sleep.fm) are even more confident as others copy our idea as well try to use our intellectual property!

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Amit Gupta — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 19:55:24 -0000

OK So an idea coming from a successful entrepreneur has more weight. I agree. The guy has a history of success. But what's your advice to the guy who is trying the first time or has failed before? How can he prove his idea is good?

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

beadednecklaces — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 05:44:44 -0000

BeadedQueen.com offers high quality handmade beaded necklaces made by
local EU artisans.

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Felix — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 18:38:58 -0000

Great post. Maybe the general point should be "Having the right idea at the right time matters"?

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Pawel Brodzinski — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:40:56 -0000

I can't agree that "you just need to build the right product. A mediocre team building the right product will succeed and a brilliant team building the wrong product will fail."

If you have mediocre team and you try to build great product you will most likely survive for some time, not succeed. By the time you'll improve your team someone will reuse the idea and "steal" your success before you're ready to achieve it.

On the other hand great team should be aware something is wrong with the product an should be able (if you're lucky) to adjust the plan.

The whole thing isn't so simple as you don't act in a single moment but over time in changing business environment. If you constantly adjust your business model you rise your chances.

Great idea alone is wortheless. Great team alone is worthless too. You have to mix them to be fairly sure you'll achieve a success.

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Nick B.B. — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 06:07:35 -0000

I've got an idea... nup...lost it. What a relief.

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

rizwan adil — Sun, 16 Nov 2008 10:06:08 -0000

this is lovely stuff. made perfect sense

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Inyuki — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:13:08 -0000

Thank you for an idea of how to get one's ideas funded.

My idea of how to sell my ideas was simply to join a company and start applying my ideas to it's inner workings. That is, while having a job, thinking of possible innovations and solutions that would make the company work better and be better, even to think of a mission of the company it is not right. Then gradually start buying shares of the company, and think of greater ideas that company could realize and benefit, and hence, increase the price of it's shares, the part of which would be mine :-).

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Pepsi — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 21:10:51 -0000

Because many people want to keep it simple, not everyone understands technical minutiae or the processes that go on in a business, you can't hope to condense everything that goes on in a business (especially big ones) in one post.

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Pepsi — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:29:52 -0000

Idea's do matter a hell of a lot, einstein changed the world with conceiving of the proper ideas with which to view physics and gravity, the fact of the matter is, great ideas matter, but KNOWING HOW to connect ideas, into a coherent framework (an invention, a new way of doing something, etc) is hard.

It's not that ideas are worthless, it's knowing what to do with them, and knowing who has the expertise to implement them and bring them together.

The whole is more then the sum of it's parts, but knowing how to make the parts to begin with, and knowing what parts you need to create/invent, are proof positive that IDEAS matter.

The fact of the matter is rich people have the money to gamble on ideas with a buffer against the market, the average person does not have that. The fact is, if you took some really smart people off the street, who've been working on ideas and insights into many industries, and gave them a pile of money, they'd turn their ideas into successful companies or products, I have no doubt about this.

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Good Luck — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 18:42:03 -0000

Why do people insist on using analogies? Would those concepts be so difficult to understand if you used normal words like projects, programmers and money?
This must come straight from Slashdot car analogy :(

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

jon — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 13:34:55 -0000

Pretty cool article. Thanks for sharing. I think it also points out to the importance of having a good game plane for your beta version. Ones your users are giving you feedback you at least now where you are standing, how you got there, and why you did not take other routes...

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

ptc — Wed, 14 May 2008 18:54:38 -0000

Good analogy!
But isn't judgment a part of execution?

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Ranjit Mathoda — Wed, 07 May 2008 16:00:01 -0000

To continue Paul's analogy, Myhrvold's company gets together a bunch of mountain climbers and asks them about mountains they think may be worth climbing. They put together a map and brand it as an Intellectual Ventures map. The government says if you want to go up that trail, you must buy that map.

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Qi Ji — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 22:54:56 -0000

Hey Paul, could you please let me know your email address? I'm looking for your advise :) Please send me a note: august.fifth@gmail.com

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

ezn — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:49:54 -0000

Summary:
idea * judgment * ability * determination * LUCK = $$$

How did LUCK come out of the blue in the Summary? I didn't read it in your elaboration... :)

Just pulling your leg... But don't we all still have sense that there is one factor that you cannot control. I guess our job as entrepreneurs is to maximize the chances for success by playing the factors that we can control.

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

detrick — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:14:07 -0000

Excellent post Paul! My problem is I keep climbing hills and thinking they are mountains!

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

she — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 13:12:55 -0000

But the bottom line still is true - ideas alone are not useful.

It is what one makes _out_ from ideas is what is worthwhile

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

dapkus — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:34:12 -0000

nice analogy.

seems you need to get lucky too, since not every route leads safely to gold and not every mountain has gold.

also seems that much of the value in having a great team is that they'll be able to explore more mountain by moving quickly and focussing on the parts of the mountain that are safely accessible.

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

jeber — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:10:18 -0000

Getting from idea to product is much like committing a crime. One needs not only means (the idea) but opportunity. How many great ideas haven't been realized simply because the person with the idea had to opportunity to act upon it? The internet helps facilitate the conversation between those with ideas and those who can see them fulfilled, but there are still those who cannot access the internet or the people they need to contact.

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Yariv — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 06:02:59 -0000

Paul, I created a FriendFeed library for Erlang. I hope it simplifies getting around the cliff :) http://code.google.com/p/er....

Re: Ideas vs Judgment and Execution: Climbing the Mountain

Geoff — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 02:51:27 -0000

I remember reading once 'most people only have ideas about an idea" which in my experience has proven quite true.