I think that we, as a society, have come to an important realization: The notion of the Idea Person, who effortlessly produces a stream of ingenious ideas to be implemented by less intelligent underlings, needs to be deflated. At least, many of us do understand that good ideas are not born easily. In contrast, a good idea is a result of a tedious selection process that involves experimentation, reading, backtracking, hard work, and exchange of knowledge. It is also not unusual that the idea evolves substantially in the course of implementation. Yet, little or no credit goes to an Implementation Person.

As a result of the existing imbalance, some people have come to another extreme conclusion: Ideas are not valuable. Here, I have to disagree. Not all ideas are worthless. The problem is that it is hard to distinguish between a good and a bad idea until an implementation is attempted. Nevertheless, a good idea is an important ingredient of progress: Success is not possible without proper implementation, but it is not possible without good ideas either. As it was put by my co-author Anna, it is not the ideas that are overrated, it is the implementation that is undervalued.