18 responses

  1. moneygardener
    May 30, 2008

    I’d love to hear about your ideas.

    Reply

  2. MM
    May 30, 2008

    Mr. Cheap I couldn’t agree more and I’m the same way. A CS grad with a lot of ideas! I generally have the motivation to start the ideas and get about 20% done then another idea comes along to take the place of the original plan. Leaving many unfinished projects sitting idle.

    Focus and determination would be the 2 huge assets in seeing an idea through to completion. I think harnessing those would lead to pretty great things.

    Reply

  3. Nobleea
    May 30, 2008

    I, too, have a notebook full of ideas. Some are simple, some are very grandiose. The implementation, or getting a working prototype is the hard part (these are actual product ideas, as I’m a mechanical engineer).

    But to be honest, there’s a lot of really smart people out there. I guarantee someone has already at least considered the ideas that most of us come up with.

    Reply

  4. Four Pillars
    May 30, 2008

    I think once in a blue moon someone comes up with a great idea (pet rocks?) that is actually worth some money but you are correct that it’s the implementation that is the hard work.

    Reply

  5. Jerry
    May 30, 2008

    Ideas are cheap, you’re right. Ideas alone never lead to anything by themselves. It is the implementation of the idea, the insurance of hard work, and the assumption of the risk of failure that make things happen. Great ideas without anything to back them don’t make much of a difference at all!
    Jerry

    Reply

  6. Mike
    June 1, 2008

    This is very smart. I think I good idea is gold… but only when supplemented with hard work.

    Reply

  7. Curt
    June 2, 2008

    I agree and have wrote about this before. Ideas are easy to find, but leadership is very difficult to find. Leadership to build a company is the missing element. That’s what new companies need to look for.

    Reply

  8. Mark Nagurski
    February 18, 2009

    Of course neither ideas nor implementation have any inherent value. A great idea with no follow through is worthless. A bad idea that is well implemented is equally worthless.

    Where the real value of ‘ideas’ lies is in their ability to inspire people to want to implement them.

    Reply

  9. Mr. Cheap
    February 18, 2009

    Mark: I’m not so sure about that. Of course I’d rather have a well executed great idea, but if my choices are a great idea without implementation or a well implemented bad idea, I’d take the bad idea every time.

    Opening a restaurant is a bad idea in my view. Long hours, hard work, fickle customers and poor ROI. That being said, I’d take a well run restaurant over a “killer idea for the next social networking site”.

    Of course, you can take the extreme view of a truly terrible idea that would be harmful if implemented (no matter how well it’s implemented, I’m not interested in soylent green), but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here.

    I’m not sure if I’d view the value of ideas as their ability to inspire either. Is Google the top search engine because the page rank algorithm “inspired” its engineers? Naw. Its the top search engine because the page rank algorithm is a damn good way to retrieve relevant information. It’s POSSIBLE to build a business on this foundation (e.g. The Body Shop), but I wouldn’t generalize this perspective as far as you do.

    Interesting comment on an old post, thanks!

    Reply

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