What is an assertion?

What precisely does the phrase "ideas are cheap" mean, and is it a correct assertion?

• and if ideas are truly cheap, then what's the source of long-term value in a technology company? Is it all about brand in the long-term if ideas are commoditized?

• Answer:

  It helps to flesh out what's meant by an "idea" being "cheap". I think of ideas as recognizing or identifying a business need or opportunity. They're usually of the form "what if someone built ____ to ____?" and are geared to solving an existing or potential problem. So we're talking about high-level ideas that a company can be built around. What makes ideas "cheap" is that these insights usually aren't unique; it's highly unlikely that you were the first one to come up with that particular solution to that particular problem. Furthermore, identifying a solution usually doesn't take a whole lot of work or time, and there are usually many possible solutions to any given problem. Combined, these two factors - abundance of redundant supply - are what cheapen the value of an idea in the "ideas marketplace". That said, the things that do take time and skill are recognizing a good idea (by experience, prototyping, experimentation) and following through via execution (and likely coming up with a boatload of smaller good ideas along the way). I see successful tech. companies as being able to do these two things, not necessarily latch on to some flash of insight no one else has discovered. In other words, if company B can out-execute company A, who came up with the idea, company A's entire competitive advantage relies on keeping that idea secret - which disappears once the product is released.