
The billion dollar genius ego dilemma - shalmanese
http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/the-billion-dollar-genius-ego-dilemma/
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wallflower
THE FALLACY OF THE GREAT IDEA

"The problem with the great idea is that it concentrates the mind on the idea
itself. Unless the idea is executed efficiently, and with panache and
originality, then it doesn't matter how great the idea is, the enterprise will
fail.

If you never have a single great idea in your life, but become skilled at
executing the great ideas of others, you can succeed beyond your wildest
dreams. Seek them out and make them work. They do not have to be your ideas.
Execution is all in this regard.

On the other hand, if you spend your days thinking up and developing in your
mind this great idea or that, you are unlikely to get rich. Although you are
likely to make many others rich. Ideas don't make you rich. The correct
execution of ideas does."

-Felix Dennis ($400+M net worth)

<http://sivers.org/book/HowToGetRich>

[http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1084093.ece?pri...](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/article1084093.ece?print=yes&randnum=1246357554256)

Via <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=680578>

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nazgulnarsil
I don't believe in the billion dollar idea. I believe in the million dollar
idea and then iterating :)

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daniel-cussen
I always like to compare holy grail problems to the biggest of them all:
alchemy. For hundreds of years, many very smart people thought they were on
the verge of becoming richer than kings but came up with bupkus until it was
discovered that the means by which lead can be turned into gold involves
nuclear reactions.

It has been done. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation>

But what matters is the field from which you are approaching a problem.
Tabletop chemistry was not enough. You needed nuclear physics. Maybe logic is
not enough for AI. Maybe you need psychology, or some other field.

In any event, great ideas don't care about probability. Google was a great
idea, came in 1998, and kicked ass.

I've thought I've had billion-dollar ideas for eight years now. It's always
something world-changing, but I've been wrong so many times that when I come
up with a good idea I take it with a sense of humor.

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dave_au
There's always a small chance that they're not billion dollar genius' but are
instead people who have had a pretty good idea at exactly the right time.

If the right time is just after a step forward step in some seemingly
tangentially related field and just before everyone else spots the connection
then it more about luck than genius.

Of course, this doesn't apply to people with ideas that are trivially easy to
shoot down but won't listen :)

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trapper
I am a big believer that everyone's thinking the same thing at roughly the
same time. My partner and I tend to come up with great ideas, and then 2-3
years later it appears on the market executed well. We are continually saying
"I told you so" with new products that come out.

I don't think it's that we are amazingly innovative people, it's just that we
keep a pulse on technology and science trends, and love extrapolating them.

The ones that aren't on the market usually have a technical hurdle if you look
into them. I've got a drawer full :)

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dangoldin
Gladwell wrote an essay along similar lines:
<http://www.gladwell.com/2008/2008_05_12_a_air.html>

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div
That would make for a great submission, really enjoyed reading it.

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dangoldin
Yea - it was posted a while back - I think that's how I initially stumbled
upon it.

