I agree that saying,"Ideas are worth nothing" is kind of weak, and I'd like to explain why.
Ideas are cheap and contagious, execution is expensive and risky.
When I think about the concept of an "idea" vs "execution," I think about the youtube, vimeo, blip, etc sprint. Each company had relatively the same idea--video on the internet--but no number of analysts could've predicted that youtube would be the outright success of the lot. All of them had excellent execution, but it's always risky, and for youtube, it paid off.
Ideas are cheap and contagious, execution is expensive and risky.
When I think about the concept of an "idea" vs "execution," I think about the youtube, vimeo, blip, etc sprint. Each company had relatively the same idea--video on the internet--but no number of analysts could've predicted that youtube would be the outright success of the lot. All of them had excellent execution, but it's always risky, and for youtube, it paid off.