This blog post has been out there for a while, but nevertheless interesting. I like the metaphor with mountains throughout the discussion.

Imagine that products are mountains. To build a product, you will need to climb that mountain. Some mountains have a big pot of gold at the top, and some do not. In order to make money, you will need to pick the right mountain and then successfully climb to the top and gather up the gold. You can fail by choosing a mountain that has little or no gold at the top, or by dying on the way up.

Read more on Paul Buchheit’s blog: http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2008/03/ideas-vs-judgment-and-execution_9197.html

I just read the blog of Irish web development company Contrast.

They had a good post on the value of an idea, saying the value of an idea is zero. Until you execute. If you just keep your idea to yourself and don’t do anything about it your idea is worthless. It’s when you go ahead and do something that it can become something great. I agree with them and actually doing something with an idea takes a lot of determination.

Read their blog post here:
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/the-value-of-ideas/

Contrast had a competition where they would, in a week, go ahead and create a web app out of the best idea submitted. The guy who came up with the idea also got to be the owner of the app.

You can read about it here:
http://www.contrast.ie/blog/app-school-chosen-one/