News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Slashdotter on the value of ideas versus execution by jemmons on Wednesday January 07, 2009 @10:32AM (#423498)
Umm... How do you think you get funding? This is the primary difference between the technically-minded and the business-minded. The technical think wealth is who you know or what you're born to -- it's firmly outside their domain. The business-savvy create wealth. That's their job.
Re:Slashdotter on the value of ideas versus execution by biohacker42 on Wednesday January 07, 2009 @12:27PM (#423673)
That's not what I'm saying.

What I am saying is that wealth creation is:

1. Not a technical problem.

2. Highly correlated with who you know.

In no way am I implying that it is entirely outside the realm of anyone who has not been born into wealth.

Re:Slashdotter on the value of ideas versus execution by jemmons on Wednesday January 07, 2009 @02:33PM (#423823)
Right. And this is a false correlation. You might as well say "knowledge of C is highly correlated with who you know." It is undoubtedly true. If you know C, you're likely to know many others who know C. If you don't, you might struggle to name even one other person who does.

But this is obviously not because you need to know the right people to know C. It's because a programmer is born not knowing C and must struggle to learn it. In the course of her struggles, she interacts with, works with, and in other ways self-selects for many people who have shared this same struggle.

Business is the same. Its goal (at least in capitalist society) is to create wealth. No one is born knowing how to make profit. A person must struggle to learn this skill, and in doing so often associates with many others doing the same.

So you have two groups. One whose goal it is to create efficient, innovative, elegant code and another whose goal it is to create wealth. One group tends to end up with awesome software and the other tends to end up with awesome resources. It is perfectly reasonable that it should be so. And yet the developers look at the business people and say "I guess it must be who you know?" Aren't we smarter than that?

Re:Slashdotter on the value of ideas versus execution by glazz on Wednesday January 07, 2009 @11:49AM (#423603)
Create? How?
Re:Slashdotter on the value of ideas versus execution by alex_c on Wednesday January 07, 2009 @12:10PM (#423639)
You sell part of the ownership in a dream for a few million dollars. You then turn the few million into a few tens of millions.

The exact specifics of the "how" are what everyone is trying to figure out, with varying degrees of success.

Re:Slashdotter on the value of ideas versus execution by aaronblohowiak on Wednesday January 07, 2009 @06:28PM (#424158)
Actually, that isn't the wealth creation. It is am important market and business function, but the process of want creation and distribution are actually eliminating market inefficiencies, not increasing wealth. Of course, my argument is based upon the simplistic economic model, and I pay no heed to people that believe want creation yields emotional value through the deliverance of material satisfaction. Now, if you mean to say that business people are responsible for increasing factor income, than yes, exactly.