Ideas and execution...

This may be a bit of a beating-the-dead-horse thing, but one which again reared its ugly head today when I ran across my old boss, who had heard that I'd been hacking away at various products and services and forging my own interpretation of Quantified Self and whatnot. I'm one of the easiest people to get to engage in all forms of discussions on various different topics, and even more so when you hit some of the topics that I happen to be interested at the moment.

The problem with the brief discussion today was that it was not really a discussion. It was more of a "tell me what you are doing with these things", which itself wouldn't be too bad either as it's something that I actually like talking about. However, it is not a discussion if the other party does not contribute anything meaningful. In this case the main contribution was that "I have a great idea how to change this fitness/wellness field, but I won't tell it to you." Which sort of leads me to a second pet peeve of mine: ideas without execution are hallusinations (apologies for ripping that off, can't recall who said it)...

Over the years I've been involved in various things in the corporate world, the common thing I've observed is the completely misguided notion that it's the idea, or the strategy, or the whatever that is valuable and then when this intangible brainfart is reared, the job is done. Which sort of aptly explains why certain companies are in the situations that they are in. What I keep wondering is whether this is because of a fault in the thought process or because in fact it appears that not many people can or will bother to execute the idea. It's truly a pity, because the corporate world seems to kill the will to do something and in turn appears to incentivize people to not even try but to instead spend their time on more philosophical things, the merit of which is harder to assess without bringing them into the real world.