I'm not saying there are good and bad ideas. I'm saying there are ideas that are questions and there are ideas that are answers.
The inspiration of "how can I fly like a bird?" is a great idea. But it's not an answer. The only value it has is that it inspires you (and that's why we have aircraft). It cannot save you a month of hard work.
But an answer that comes to you - why don't I swap the orders of the tubes, so that the one that is slower to warm up is second, so that when it amplifies something, there signal will be ready? It seems like a simple idea, but it refers to specific parts of a known system. This idea is an answer. This kind of idea could save you a month of hard work.
I'm saying that question-like ideas are a dime a dozen - that's my position. Does that fit in with your point of view? I think the article means the same as me, but I don't know for sure.
I'm totally with you on the "ideas as answers", but I feel the article is bashing exactly these kinds of ideas - the ones that "geeks" tend to have.
There seems to be a number of people here that often say things like "execution" or "knowing what customers want" are what matters, as if those weren't composed of many good ideas, too.
I just reskimmed the article's comments on ideas, and I think you're overlooking his nuanced point of view on "brilliant ideas". For "business" (that's the scope of his comments) the key is being useful to a customer. He's exaggerating his position to counter the geek tendency to ignore this aspect.
2. for every Google there are ten examples of companies that had killer products that didn't sell - and for 1/10 the idea alone is enough. Nuance.
3. Even on the off chance that you do manage to stumble across someone who is as excited about your idea as you are - most people don't appreciate your idea (I can't even explain my current idea to myself half the time, as I'm lost in the gritty detail - that's why some kind marketing is needed). [BTW: I think that once your idea is successful, patent protection can be useful, esp to have something to sell to acquirers.]
4. What matters is what your customers think. - it's true that to sell something to someone, they have to think it's worth buying. If you think it's a brilliant idea, that's only helpful if it somehow translates (in some way) to something that customers want. Maybe you can communicate your conviction that it's great (like Jobs?), or (more likely) you use the idea to provide them with something that they already value. For the latter, the brilliance of the idea is utterly irrelevant to them; they don't even need to know it exists.
9. The idea is very nearly irrelevant. - he's not saying the idea is irrelevant, but almost irrelevant. Another nuance. He's saying it is relevant - just much less than he, or the hypothetical audience he writes for, would tend to weigh it.
Maybe they mean "execution" as opposed to "ideas as questions"? Or maybe not: I guess it's true that even with PageRank designed and implemented, it's a hell of a long way from a business, with many opportunities to mis-execute. To go from the idea of pagerank, to a working pagerank is also a lot of work. Edison's comment about 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration applies both to inventing and commercializing.
For myself, the inspiration of a product was instantaneous; the first working version took two hours; but it took a year of further iteration before my first sale. I think that's much more than 99% perspiration (though there were lots of little ideas along the way, and one brilliant suggestion of what to look at - from someone else - that changed everything).
I think pinning people down on what they mean by "idea" might clarify things.
The inspiration of "how can I fly like a bird?" is a great idea. But it's not an answer. The only value it has is that it inspires you (and that's why we have aircraft). It cannot save you a month of hard work.
But an answer that comes to you - why don't I swap the orders of the tubes, so that the one that is slower to warm up is second, so that when it amplifies something, there signal will be ready? It seems like a simple idea, but it refers to specific parts of a known system. This idea is an answer. This kind of idea could save you a month of hard work.
I'm saying that question-like ideas are a dime a dozen - that's my position. Does that fit in with your point of view? I think the article means the same as me, but I don't know for sure.