I dropped in on Pause, my guilty pleasure, and Jory has posted her take on Randall Rothenberg’s interesting article in Strategy+Business.

Like Jory, I was taken back by the article and left feeling like it challenges a lot of what we’ve learned from Seth Godin’s Purple Cow and Tom Peters’ WOW! Either I totally misunderstand the article, or basically it espouses that the idea doesn’t matter as long as the execution is good.

I completely disagree with that notion. The execution does matter, but it cannot consistently overcome a horrible idea. Last night’s episode of The Apprentice is an excellent example. In creating an advertising concept for Lamborghini, the men lost based on horrible ideas. In his article, Rothenberg states the following.

Every manager, from the middle on up, knows that the secret to success lies not in strategy, but in galvanizing a team to implement the strategy.

Yet if you watched The Apprentice last night, you saw one team focus on teamwork (the men) and they lost horribly. Why? Because they never had a solid idea to build around.

Teamwork is huge. It is critical. But without a good idea, you have no reason for a team to exist.