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Design meets Business

I have written, debugged, and fixed software for most of my life. My conversations with other software developers have often ended up with wondering thoughts of how certain lines of code are worth more than than gold or platinum. Then there are others where which many people have spent countless amounts of time pouring over, become worth less than the dirt that you are standing upon. It is very much the same way in the careers of people. Some end up richer than anyone can even imagine while many others toil and grind their entire lives just to squeek by with the demands of life.

In the world of technology, there is a disconnect between the value and difficulty of a product. As human beings, we tend to equate what is hard with its worth. It is hard to make so it must be worth a lot of money. This is not necessarily true. Engineers, scientists, developers always tend to choose the path that they think will lead to the money. This inevitably leads to complicated designs and ideas. They end up discussing it to death when a business opportunity comes along. It comes, it wilts, and it dies without anyone becoming the wiser. Business people has a sort-of street smarts in that they understand that an idea has to be tried out before you can jump on the bandwagon. This is a thought that was previously explored: Ideas are cheap, words are even cheaper

Like NIKE says: Just Do It. That's where the rubber meets the road. And the results of doing it may surprise you more than you think. One step to getting to reality is to do it rather than to just talk about it. It may turn out or it may not. But you are not going to know if it is still on the drawing board.

Software developers understand this as the mantra: release early, release often.

Addendum: Good ideas are like any sharp sword, it is very easy to cut yourself if you are not careful with it. This idea release early, release often -- is a double-edged one.