Idea vs. Execution: Why Execution Is Sexier in America Today

By Dyske    January 12th, 2011

When I first came to this country in the 80s, the Americans saw themselves as the originators of all the great ideas, and Japan as a country that took (or even stole) their ideas and executed them well (or better). Back then, this view of the two countries was meant to paint America as being superior to Japan. The latter was merely a “copy cat”. In other words, in the 80s, “idea” was clearly superior to “execution”. Now, things are changing. A lot of people are catching on to the fact that ideas are “a dime a dozen”, and that “execution is all that matters”. Some are arguing that you cannot separate ideas from execution as each would become meaningless on their own. Either way, execution is clearly getting a lot more respect these days than it used to. And, ironically, this comes after America has lost most of its abilities to make things.

I’m not exactly sure why this shift in sentiment is happening but I believe it started after the Dotcom bust. Many “great” ideas never saw the light of day, and everyone realized the limitations of “great ideas”. Not just that, the Internet made it very easy to search and find the same or similar ideas that other people came up with. If you have a “great idea”, you just have to Google it, and chances are, someone else has already beat you to it. This was particularly true when iPhone’s App Store opened. Everyone had “great ideas”. I had an idea of writing a game where you pop a bubble wrap. I figured this was a weird enough idea that nobody else would think of it, but sure enough, someone had already done it. No matter how many ideas I came up with, there was always someone else with the same idea. The speed and the efficiency by which we can find others with the same idea made us realize how ubiquitous “great ideas” are. I believe this is why “execution” is where the emphasis is today.

2 Responses

  1. Zeitgeist says:

    January 12th, 2011 at 6:42 pm

    It is dear unfortunate that present humans are conditioned to leave undiscovered the cultivated creativity definition: greatness. What is it exactly if an object is ‘great’? There are no such; no ideal is composed on an own. Emerged compositions are based upon contributions from the work of prior generations and environmental influences. Us Dwarfs sit on the shoulders of Giants.

    Nationalistic productivity is a degree of an unethical monetary system. Technological unemployment is to follow – and it is propagated that established industries care about persons. This is an enormous fallacy.

  2. BruceCarson2008 says:

    February 1st, 2011 at 6:14 am

    Good article, and I agree that execution is the name of the game, it really always has been. As Edison quipped, genius is 99% sweat and 1% inspiration.

    One point though, If it needed to, the US or most any other industrialized country could nearly become an Autarky. Germany in the second world war clearly proved this, yes they lost, but in an industrial sense they rebuilt very quickly and were almost entirely self reliant during the war. Clearly what matters is not the infrastructure that exists at this moment, but knowledge, and in that sense the US has the “ability” to make basically anything, even though it might take us a few months to start doing so.

    The only countries the US or China really couldn’t easily replace as a supplier are probably Germany, Japan, Canada, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, OPEC countries and perhaps Chile (for Lithium). Germany is nearly the only supplier for a lot of advanced machine tools along with Japan, The rest are all irreplaceable due to simple fact they are basically the only supplier of certain rare earth metals or oil.

    An aside: China is the final assembly point for all sorts of things, but is not the only manufacturing point for a lot of things. Take the iPhone for example, it’s assembled in China and therefore under US law it’s labeled as “Made in China” but most of the value added stages are done in foreign countries. The largest chunk of the value of the chips inside the iPhone is actually produced in Japan! In a value added sense, the iPhone is made in Japan, not by Foxconn, China is however moving up the value added ladder, making more advanced components with more knowledgeable workers who demand more money. As this happens, final assembly will move to other up and coming countries like India or Indonesia. (WSJ Article “Not Really ‘Made in China'”)

    …

    O yeah, another great example of the cut throat nature of dominance is China’s recent export restrictions on rare earth metals. In my opinion it’s a good move, China was suffering a lot from pollution of haphazard rare earth mining for quick profit… but, as soon as China announced the export restriction, before it was even put into place, Climax Molybdenum in Colorado worked to re-open previously closed Mines. The world economy moves fast.