* Most online privacy issues can be prevented by common sense. Particularly problematic for many people is seeing how they post personal information on social media, neglect to use privacy settings, and are surprised when their personal information is stolen weeks later. While you can be careful about what you post about yourself, you can’t prevent other people from posting about you. Also problematic is how there are sites like http://www.dirtyphonebook.com where people post personal information about each that can’t be removed. With Google making all of this information widely available, being vigilant about seeing what people can find out you is critical to maintaining your online reputation. Facebook can do a bit more to prevent people from accidentally messing up their own lives by encouraging more sensible defaults, but in the end people have to be smart about what they post about themselves online and who they give out their private information to and not to give out there passwords to. People have to take responsibility for their own privacy, but I guess in this world somebody else always has to take care of you.

* I hate to be cruel about this to people, but I think that anybody that gives out their password to an employer or anybody else is an idiot. Maybe I just have a different perspective than somebody who didn’t start using technology from an early age, but it seems like common sense to not give your password away. Am I wrong in thinking this?

@Kav: I think the length of the discussion underpins my point. The phrase “Ideas are worthless” is far too simplifying and over-reaching. It’s also used way too often. It just seems silly that people would ever say it, given just how important ideas are in tech.

@Jan: Great point. Execution can be all you need. You can certainly use that point to say that execution is more important than the idea, which I totally agree with. But to take it even further and say that ideas are worthless is just silly. And of course you’re right about the killer combo of good ideas and good execution.

We tend to want to quantify things in tech, which leads to this seeming hostility towards ideas. Ideas are hard to quantify. They can lead you to making a lot of money, but there’s no real market to sell an individual idea.

But I still think they have value. Sometimes immense value. If we could look back in time, we’d see someone giving the Google co-founders the “ideas are worthless” speech. But their idea was pretty damn good (and it was an idea relating to the method of execution, which they also nailed).

Track any invention back to its conception as an idea and you might find the inventor getting similar flak. I would just hate for an idea like that to get squashed today just because this “ideas are worthless” trend has gotten out of control.

Thats really all there is to say about that.

What you are trying to say, I guess, is that execution, without any spark of inspiration or a strong idea behind it, is also worthless, and I would agree. But that is not what the saying is about.

So, what Kav says: The “Ideas are worthless” mantra is both very true and also only very specifically targeted at people who think very highly of their own one big idea and forget to try their Idea on the world.

@Aditya: This is getting a bit philosophical, but I’d say that even then every small idea needs to have an action as a consequence.

Also, to continue the nitpicking niveau of this post, let me tell you that sometimes execution without ideas is entirely possible. Take any form of mastery (let it be arts, sports) as an example: Pure, uninspired, but excellently executed mastery will blow most of us away any time. If the spark of inspiration (or, put differently: a very good, spontaneous idea) is added to this, you’ll get what most people would call genius: The one totally impossible pass on the soccer field, the quirky element in a flawless rendition of a classic piece of music, the one crazy jump combination on the ice skating rink that nobody tried before.

So, yes, execution, in contrast to ideas alone, can get you a long way, but to be outstanding (and in the end, that’s what you’re after), you better have some good ideas as well. Otherwise you will flawlessly play catchy tunes on a cruise ship for the rest of your life

But as I said, that’s not what the saying is about. It’s about people who think that having the right idea will suffice.

I guess I’d say “Ideas aren’t worthless. Idea is worthless.”

And to be totally fair the “Ideas are worthless” message isn’t for people who execute at all. The message is for those guys that have spent the last five years thinking about and tweaking their One Great Idea without doing a damn thing. Once every few months they trot it out at a networking event behind covert glances and NDA threats and it’s an absolutely confusing mess. Then they try to recruit a dev team on the “value” of their idea, thinking that having a napkin full of notes entitles you to kick back and take a 50% stake of a company. If they are lucky they may have a wit of domain knowledge or expertise but odds are even they don’t. So before you hate on “Ideas are worthless” too much I’d encourage you to work to understand who this statement is targeted at.

Thanks,
Kav