IdeasAreCheap

ThoughtStorms Wiki

Context : OnIdeas

Ideas are cheap, execution is expensive.

1) But if so, why?

2) And why do so many bad ideas get executed?

Hypotheses

There are a lot of ideas but few good ones. Maybe good is defined as relative to some context, ecological or market niche. (Compare RedSoxTechnologies)

Maybe ideas need to grow and adapt. Without being implemented, an idea doesn't get the requisit feedback and criticism. (See also CriticalRationalism)

Both these seem to answer question 1, but what about question 2?

Reading this page may me think of optimisation problems. Generating random solutions is easy. Finding really good solutions is hard. 'Feedback' is probably analagous to the kind of local search that typically helps you find slightly better solutions from an already OK solution.

So yeah, ideas ara cheap in general, but the best 'new' ideas are very rare.

Another point here is that it depends who has the idea. The success, or usefullness of an idea depends a lot on who has it and when.

So, overall the really tough / expensive / impossible thing to achieve is generating the 'right' idea at the 'right' time every time. So, generating 'useful' ideas is expensive.

– OliSharpe

Hmmm. So see also GenerateAndTestInParallel?

– PhilJones

A picture

Today I had a picture in my head. Some bunch of guys, sitting around. Someone says : "hey, let's make a search engine, which orders the search-results according to how many other pages on the net link to them" A nay-sayer responds : "don't be daft, companies will just start putting up other sites that link to theirs, in order to appear more popular. God! They'll probably have automatic systems that go round filling up all the public discussion boards with links to their site to increase it's ranking."

The nay-sayer is right. And yet ...