It takes a team to ship an idea
Ideas aren’t enough, it isn’t enough to think of something first: you need to implement and ship it to claim it.
To implement and ship an idea requires more than one individual: it requires a team, co-operation and the refining of the idea. This is often forgotten, instead the original individual’s epiphany is idolized.
The epiphany is not the hard bit. The idea for a automobile autopilot has occurred to pretty much everyone who drives or uses a car. Yet there is still no commercial car autopilot solution. Why? It requires expertise from multiple domains to solve such a whole series of non-trivial problems in multiple problem spaces to reach the goal: this means hard work, problem solving, intense discussion, passion and lots of resources.
Liza Wood has a good post about this over on her blog: Sockets & Lightbulbs. Go read & watch.
