"repeated this mess here"
That's repeated this myth here. VR error. :)

I recently repeated this mess here, so I enjoyed the article and comments. OA has a good point that if there are so many good ideas, someone good at commercializing them should be able to easily pick one after the other off the idea tree.

Maybe the same should be that ideas are a dime a dozen, but great "zero-to-one" ideas are rare.

Awesome

Anyone who could write fairly sophisticated music from the age of 5 on was pretty gifted. Although, it may well be that his father was instrumental in some creation of those very early works, promoting his son as a boy wonder, playing the piano and violin standing on a chair in front of the crown heads.

Most "gifts" including those of Mozart, came from incredibly concentrated focus and from a young age.

The OP is confused. Rendering a good idea in actual profitable business is not claimed to be a "dime a dozen". But the ideas are the easy part.

Ideas are cheap and easy. With a little practice it isn't that hard to generate good ideas. Ideas that can be rendered to actually producible goods and services and are so rendered are a good deal harder.

And no, you don't have to be some genius to come up with a good and marketable and buildable idea.

The original poster specified a “nuclear powered rocket” as a great idea, which requires that I mention my late Uncle Marty. He filed his “Nuclear rocket engine” patent US 3383858 A in 1956 on August 9:
http://www.google.com/patents/US3383858

I still have a have a copy of the June 1956 paper he wrote (with Mrs. E. C. Orr) for the Rocketdyne Division of North American Aviation, entitled:
Project Snooper: A Program for Reconnaissance of the Solar System with Ion Propelled Vehicles
It’s filled with details about ion currents, equations of motion, propellant properties for the various alkali elements, and so on.

In addition to his incredible brilliance and inventiveness in many fields, he was a kind and truly wonderful person according to everyone who knew him, including me.

As I've gotten older, my perspective on that has changed a little. As a refrigeration technician, I can't just throw a compressor on my shoulder and carry it up a ladder any more, my body is too beat up. Also, I have a plethora of knowledge that I can implant on the younger guys that only comes with experience. But I do think that someone that is young who has no field experience who is teaching is most likely not the best technician to learn from. So when I shrug, that's what I'll do....

If great ideas were a dime a dozen, JP Morgan would not have provided the financing for Thomas Edison and his then protege, Nikola Tesla.

Can not tell you how many engineers don't understand the value of good program management or finance discipline or a great general manager. It takes both a great idea, financing and disciplined execution to really succeed, particularly in the long run.

I'm sure. This is my first substantiall exposure to it and I'm enthralled.

There is nothing more fun than pushing back the frontiers of the world by creating something new with other smart people, when they are well funded and the world/economy is acting rationally. Being a independent patent attorney in the 90s was one of the greatest jobs in the world because of this.

Genius, schmenius.
We are all born tabula raza. A blank slate. However, some are given gifts. Jesse Owens was given a great athlete's body, but still, he worked his butt off to hone it into an Olympic winner.Mozart was born with a gift for music, Beethoven wasn't. Mozart wrote great mastewrpieces, but so did Beethoven, some say greater than Mozart. It's one thing to have an idea, even a great one, but it means nothing unless it's brought to fruition. The bringing it forth often entails hard work and sacrifice. Not sacrifice for others, but for oneself. Ayn Rand didn't sit down at her typewriter and zip off 1,000+ pages of Atlas. She worked and struggled over it, tweaking and honing until it was born, out of plenty of agonized sweat. Benz, it is said invented the automobile, but it didn't come into its own until Ford figured out how to mass produce it. No one, from Einstein to Bernstein ever created anything worthwhile without going through effort equal to the greatness of the product. Sometimes that effort occurs during the process, sometimes afterwards. But just like life, no one gets off the roller coaster without all the ups and downs.

Thanks. Even if it doesn't pan out, the whole experience has already been worthwhile, and a lot of fun!

That is Awesome. Hopefully, you all will be well rewarded for your hard work (a slice of your own novel) and have fun in the process.

Which leads to sameness, just another ant on the farm; nothing or no one is exceptional which leads to equal outcomes...exactly as I say...180 degrees opposed to reality.

That started when a dime could actually buy a dozen of something. lol Before the FED stole the value out of the currency.
see: http://02f8c87.netsolhost.com/WordPre...

Great article and thanks for posting it. I am involved as an investor and operationally with a truly revolutionary, patented invention. It took the inventor about thirty years to bring his invention to its current stage of development. It has enormous commercial potential and we have had no trouble getting a companies to recognize that potential and initiate development work. The important point is that the invention itself was the product of genius and years of effort. The rest of us who are involved with the company will face our share of financial and operational challenges, but we would not be facing those challenges but for the brilliance, relentless hard work, and persistence of the inventor. Great ideas, and particularly great inventions, are not a dime a dozen, they're exceedingly rare and fragile. Even great inventions don't always successfully make it to market. I challenge anyone who thinks differently to go find one of those dime-a-dozen ideas and make their fortune. I can assure them, from my personal experience, that it's one of the hardest things in the world to do, even with a great invention.

Florida Tech is private, fortunately. I wouldn't have it any other way.

As with most Gulchers, the enthusiasm I have for what I do is contagious. The drive to know, understand, and then capitalize on that knowledge is innate in many of us, but it does need to be cultivated.

We have all had great teachers that decided that their greatest accomplishment would be to teach others how to apply reason to their lives, to explore ideas and to make the best of their lives. Unfortunately, there are too few that see how important they can be by inspiring others. I had this frumpy old maid math teacher that constantly said "Nothing is impossible to a willing heart" over and over. I got tired of hearing it. I hated that she reseated the class after every test in order of their score. I did not want to have any of my classmates sitting in front of me and she exposed me if I slipped. She was a public school teacher but I don't think she mooched.

Indeed they do exist.

I know that you are not such a teacher. But they exist.

Except for those of us who have shrugged. I had a respectable biofuels company going, but shrugged back into teaching when President Zero said that "I didn't build that" and said that he was going to favor solar energy over my company. Teaching is my shrug job, but I really have about as enjoyable a position as I could have ... without mooching off the government.