Sam, this conception of an "idea"
is in astoundingly strong
conflict with the conceptions of ideas elsewhere in business and national security that are commonly
strongly and seriously protected as classified national security secrets (e.g., how stealth works, how the engines on the SR-71 worked, the details of the Navy's version of GPS), intellectual property, trade secrets, patents, how academic honors are awarded, e.g., the Abel prize, the Nobel science prizes, the Fields Medal, the Clay Math prizes, and more.
"The very best ideas usually don't seem worth stealing."
You are actually citing examples of execution excellence and IP, rather than "ideas" as the word is used in early stage VC circles. For example the idea of making a low radar cross section aircraft is not new or valuable since right after radar was first developed. However executing on that idea to create the stealth fighter design produces something very valuable.
But how to create stealth took some darned good "ideas".
Sure, the startup "circles" regard an idea as a short description of a sentence or
two to a family member, neighbor, or prospective user/customer of how the new product/service will look to them.
But, then what about how to make that product/service work? Ignore that? That part should be crucial: Crucial
for having the first good or a much better product/solution,
a technological advantage and barrier to entry,
etc. That "idea" could take
original research, be regarded as
valuable intellectual property and protected as a trade secret,
etc.
Sure, the user/customer need
not be aware of that "idea" maybe in the internals of the product/service.
Then to say
"The very best ideas usually don't seem worth stealing."
ignores the crucial, core ideas, say, the details of the coating (likely highly classified and from a lot of R&D) and shape (again
from a lot of R&D, and
Maxwell's equations computations, likely
challenging and classified) that were key to stealth.
Or, here's an "idea": A safe, effective, cheap one pill taken once to cure any cancer. Sure that "idea" is just pie in the sky and worthless. But to create such a pill will take one heck of a good idea. To me it is just such good ideas that
should be central in information technology
startups. It sounds like
Sam is neglecting that
any such ideas are possible,
relevant, valuable, or important. Or, to me, an
idea for an algorithm that
shows that P = NP is astounding, and astoundingly valuable -- implement it on
a server and behind a lot of
security and just sell the
results, say, anyone who
wants to send in any
integer linear programming
problem, that is, any of
the thousands of important
real world examples of
NP-complete problems.
Actually the shape of the f-117 came out of computations based on publicly published work. A Skunk works engineer was skimming through obscure russian math papers when he came across it by chance. 'Skunk Works' by Ben Rich
I am firmly on your side in regards ideas, but I think the problem is we are not all meaning the same thing by what is an idea. If your idea is crap (uber for x) then the only thing that matters is execution. If your idea is good then it is very valuable independent of execution.
My favourite pure good idea with enormous value has to be the Kelly criterion [1].
I lost money (luckly not too much) in the stock market on a position where I was right and I didn't know why. I decided to find out and I learned that the size of my trade was larger than the Kelly criterion.
The Kelly criterion seems to not be well known - why I can't say other than there are a lot of groups that benefit from people being ignorant of it.
(e.g., how stealth works, how the engines on the SR-71 worked, the details of the Navy's version of GPS)
None of these are "ideas", they are implementations/executions of ideas. They are the result of trial and error (even thought-experiments) that ultimately resulted in real world impact and observable changes. Ideas are unexpressed potential. How the Navy's version of GPS works isn't valuable until after the Navy starts using it. Before that, it's just conjecture. But at the point where the Navy deploys GPS, while it is information, it's not solely an idea; it's pragmatic.
Even knowledge of a newfangled GPS system the Navy is working on or going to deploy and start using on a certain date isn't an idea anymore: it's actionable information that can be traded on. An idea is a kind of information, but not all information is an idea. And while thoughts can be information, not all thoughts are ideas.
That being said, I think you are partially right: the concept of an idea not having value is unintuitive, and a lot of other industries are commonly in the habit of presenting ideas as having value. You'll see this when people talk about patents, as if having a patent somehow conveys value on the thing that is patented beyond just the government enforced exclusivity. A patented idea that can not be brought to market in some fashion isn't that valuable (and actually has negative value: not only is it not brought to market; without bringing it to market, you can not reap the benefits of exclusivity; and you've paid for obtaining the right to a patent you are unable to exploit. So it's a net negative).
"The very best ideas usually don't seem worth stealing."
is an astounding statement.