送交者: 吴礼 于 2005-2-02, 09:53:38:
回答: "Idea is Cheap" - Why do people say that? 由 火格Meshfire 于 2005-2-01, 21:04:18:
It takes a lot of work to translate idea to real product and ultimately to profit. People have ideas all the time. Most ideas die not because they are proven to be wrong. They die because people give up on them at some point, due to funding, other opportunities, limitation in various capacities, etc.
Many people who conceive a new idea worry that others may steal the idea. Such worry often leads to over-secrecy, which eventually cripples the development. In fact, to implement an idea requires passion. And it is difficult to have passion over a stolen idea. So it is rare that others would succeed on your ideas.
Thomas Edison is arguably the most successful inventor in history. But if you look at his entire life, his many successes of different scales and his failures (all in terms of business and profit), you would agree that it’s not how great the idea is, but the business arrangements, and the countless practical obstacles, that carries or kills an invention. If we look at history at large, very few spectacular businesses own the original ideas. Bell may have invented the telephone. However, in the early days, AT&T competed with several other companies in deploying telephones. Their IP did not give them much advantage in those years. Intel was among the first who worked on micro-processors. But there were several other companies at the time. Intel succeeded also due to business reasons. Today, where can we find the inventors of optical fibers, liquid crystals, fuel cells, etc.? Of course, all successful companies own a lot of IPs. However, most of them are incremental developments, not breakthroughs.