Are good ideas really a dime a dozen?

It is a common belief among professionals and entrepreneurs that good ideas are a dime a dozen and that it is your ability to "execute" on an idea that really matters. I've always gone along with this "belief", but deep down I've never believed it, not for a moment. That may have something to do with my lack of significant success as an entrepreneur, but it is nonetheless how I feel.

I feel (and passionately believe) that so many ventures are quite lacking in really good ideas. There are plenty of "okay" ideas that got tossed around and talked up as if they were great ideas, but the simple fact is that it is also a common belief that great execution of a mediocre idea trumps mediocre execution of a good idea.

That is one of the stumbling blocks that has prevented my from being a great entrepreneurial success. I've always looked for the better ideas and not been so great on the execution.

At heart, I'm an idea guy, not an execution guy. If you want entrepreneurial success, you've got to flip those priorities around.

Even if I had managed to do that flip, I would simply have risked having an entrepreneurial success which I wasn't passionately into. In other words, even if I achieved entrepreneurial success and was financially set for life, what would I do? I'd quit and focus on identifying, elaborating, and refining ideas.

Maybe there is no money in pursuing ideas, but that is what interests me most. My belief is that many of the big social, economic, political, and technological problems of the world are simply due to lack of sufficiently great ideas.

To answer my question, good ideas are not a dime a dozen,but an entrepreneur should answer: so what... execution is all that matters anyway.

-- Jack Krupansky