There are some fashionable memes running through entrepreneurship circles these days that are routinely mentioned in blogs, etc. (fail quick/often, ideas are cheap, etc). They certainly have merit, but are usually generalizations that can break-down when applied to specific situations. This concept of ideas being cheap/worthless is one of them.

Certainly, business ideas on their own usually have little value without execution. But it really depends. If your differentiator is the idea, you are at greater risk of direct competition, and so spreading the idea around without first gaining a foothold is risky, especially if you discuss it with people who are entrepreneurial minded. Sometimes a startup needs breathing room to find a true differentiator beyond the idea. I bet there is a long, long list of people being "wronged" after discussing their plans with others. Feedback is certainly hugely valuable, but people need to be judicious with what, and to whom, they reveal.

"Certainly, business ideas on their own usually have little value without execution. But it really depends. If your differentiator is the idea, you are at greater risk of direct competition, and so spreading the idea around without first gaining a foothold is risky, especially if you discuss it with people who are entrepreneurial minded. Sometimes a startup needs breathing room to find a true differentiator beyond the idea. I bet there is a long, long list of people being "wronged" after discussing their plans with others. Feedback is certainly hugely valuable, but people need to be judicious with what, and to whom, they reveal."

The reason a lot of people say "ideas are cheap" isn't just because there is no problem in spreading them around. I don't know about other people, but I've never had an idea that, once I started to execute on it, didn't change a lot. Since (as far as I can tell) this is almost always the case, spreading the initial idea truly doesn't cost me anything.

Of course, there are fields this isn't true, but this generalization gets thrown around a lot in these circles because, for most people reading these blogs, it's true.

Thank you. I didn't use the phrase "ideas are worthless" on purpose. Reason being, they're worth something (maybe not in a tangible form at least). It's actually hard to find an idea that has the right market size, begging for the right product, which you can build a relevant team around it. Now can people steal the idea? Sure. The points I outlined would probably be sub-sections of execution.

I like to look at ideas as "potential energy". Not necessarily worthless, but hard to tell how much you get out of them until you actually get them rolling.

Business ideas are a dime and a dozens. Technical ideas and solutions are valuable.

Technical solution itself rarely has big value until it resolves some actual business or social problems.