
If Execution Is What Matters, Where Does That Leave Ideas? - vaksel
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/17/if-execution-is-what-matters-where-does-that-leave-ideas/
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hymanroth
The whole idea/execution riff is reductionist. Some ideas are more or less
obvious. Twitter is a great example: there was basically no idea, it was all
execution and marketing. But other ideas are huge. Larry and Sergey's idea of
how to index the web was genuinely novel. The best team in the world could
have executed on pre-Google search tech and would have got nowhere.

It all depends on the idea: some are just so much _better_ than others...

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amichail
Twitter's idea is not obvious. Why would restricting blog entries to 140
characters result in a new and very interesting phenomenon?

Larry and Sergey's PageRank isn't a new application level idea (as search
engines already existed) but rather a better implementation of an existing
application level idea.

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hymanroth
Twitter's key insight was to extend a blogging platform to mobile phones
(hence the 140 limit). It was definitely innovative and smart, but not the
kind of thing they give out Nobel prizes for. I think the Google boys' idea
went much deeper, and their indexing methods were completely novel at the
time, hence much more relevant results.

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raphar
Google's way of indexing was not novel at the time. There were others that
used the same methods. Their execution on the other hand was flawless.

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hymanroth
Well, that's a matter of opinion. From what I have read, their method was
innovative, hence the patents. The problem with working this kind of stuff out
is that history is always biased towards the winners (in the sense that nobody
talks about the losers). With that it mind, you could quite possibly be right.

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redorb
If not their methods - their hardware was definitely a new thought at that
time - Low cost commodity hardware etc; when it was cool to spend 10k on a
server,

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wmeredith
A spark is nothing _compared_ to a fire, but the fire _is_ nothing without a
spark.

~~~
ALee
A necessary, but not sufficient condition to a successful startup.

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dpnewman
Is there such a thing as execution without ideas ... about execution? A lot of
the genius of a great tech is stuff that isn't really visible. I don't mean
code, I mean subtle choices about how to create the experience that excites
users, or how to build architecture on the idea such that it can have a
platform play later. Etc. So the spark is definitely to be recognized, yet the
daily building of something is no less requiring of innovation or "genius".

Did I just restate and reword the obvious? Did I execute? Eh.

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pmichaud
He's right about the idea being the launch pad, but it's more like the first
step up an uncharted mountain.

The "idea" is often left in the dust many times over as the business morph
into something that the market likes, and those ideas can come from anywhere
-- a person explaining it, an unrelated sign, a moment of frustration,
whatever.

That spark is like a drop in the ocean of execution. It's almost, but not
quite worthless. It's worth a pat on the back, nothing else.

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donaldc
This somewhat reminds me of the nature vs. nurture argument. It's a false
dichotomy.

Also, at least as important as the idea itself, is the ability to _recognize_
a good idea. Most people who try have plenty of ideas, and most of these ideas
just aren't that good.

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amichail
It is not in the self-interest of a university, company, or a VC to value
ideas publicly although they may do so privately.

Companies want you to implement things based on ideas that are not your own.
So it is in their self-interest to tell you that ideas are not important.

A university education is all about teaching students to implement stuff
because: (1) this is what companies want; and (2) it is easier to do so than
to try to get students to come up with compelling ideas.

Finally, VCs fund very small companies and it makes sense for them to worry
about whether a small team is capable of great execution. No matter how good
the founders' idea, VCs don't want to lose on their investments.

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rajat
It's not that a particular idea does not have any value; it's that without
proper execution, it does not realize its potential value.

In my career in computers, I have come across people with great ideas a few
times, who have done nothing with that idea (primarily because they wouldn't
leave their safe jobs), only to see it become insanely successful when someone
else, who had the same idea independently, executed on it. So the idea
obviously had value, but only because the potential was realized with the
execution.

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mgunes
"That's all very well in practice, but will it ever work in theory?" -- G. R.
Hill III

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bradgessler
They're both equally as important; without one you can't sustain the other.

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ryanwaggoner
They're most definitely not equally important. There are far more examples of
successful businesses built on the backs of mediocre ideas but with great
execution than there are of ones built on the back of great ideas with
mediocre execution.

Also, your comment smacks of wanting to bitch about something because this is
a TechCrunch story...did you even read it? The article is about the backstory
of Tweetmeme and the bigger question of compensation for someone who was
involved in the early idea of a startup, but wasn't there for the execution
and risk-taking that came later.

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bradgessler
If you have awesome execution over a long period of time without new ideas
your product/service/whatever will stagnate. On the flip-side if you only have
good ideas with poor execution nothing will get off the ground. Both are
equally as important from my point-of-view and shouldn't be viewed as zero-
sum.

And no, I read the headline and skimmed the article.

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ryanwaggoner
Great execution without new ideas over a long period of time describes a large
portion of the Fortune 1000. Some industries are not driven by innovation.

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bradgessler
I disagree. Most Fortune 1000 companies innovate indirectly in their products
or services. You need "good ideas" to develop, manufacture, and distribute
goods globally. That's why I don't look at "good ideas" and execution
separately; ultimately you need good ideas to feed into the execution of a
product.

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pclark
never got tweetmeme.

