"Ideas" alone are almost never worth anything. You have to do the work to back it up. Everyone I know has about a dozen ideas (you hear them all the time as someone who makes ideas real).
What matters is the technical skill to make the idea go from a fantasy to a reality semi-reminiscent of the idealized fantastic version, whether that skill is in business, accounting, programming, marketing, or whatever.
Yes, I've heard the "ideas are worthless" meme, I just don't entirely believe it. Ideas are easier to have, so a bigger fraction of them are worthless, but that's not actually a good measure of the "relative worth" of ideas and implementations, precisely because the mechanics of producing them is different. Good ideas, e.g. actual market opportunities, problem-solving breakthroughs, are rare and valuable. Insight is valuable.
You can execute as hard as you want, but if you're headed in the wrong direction, the only good thing that's going to happen is that you're going to learn when ideas really are important.
The real pain is making a decision and expending resources on your challenging/risky idea. There's very little appetite for the responsibility and risk that come with big ideas (in a BigCo).
Got the ability to think up new ideas, sell them within an organisation, and get them executed (hello 'doer') in a way that provides value to that organisation? You're gold, and worth way more than the 'doer'.
>Got the ability to think up new ideas, sell them within an organisation, and get them executed (hello 'doer') in a way that provides value to that organisation?
No one can "have" this ability because it's transient. Unless you control the entire corporation (in which case you don't need to influence anyone else anyway), there is always someone who can come in and break your previously-perfect ability to "sell" your ideas inside the org. You're claiming that artful politicians (or, more blatantly, "good bullshit artists") are more valuable than skilled engineers. I don't believe that.
I actually don't really agree. From all the medium-large sized business I've been on the inside of, as both a consultant and employee, it seems that a lot of people have a lot of pretty OK ideas about how to fix things within the org and where to take the products. In general, excluding a few noobs and whack-jobs, these ideas seem to be about as viable and plausible as the ideas that actually do get pushed down.
The valuable thing in a big company isn't the idea; it's the way the idea is executed. You'd be amazed what kind of nonsensical ideas will work if your team gets it just right.
What matters is the technical skill to make the idea go from a fantasy to a reality semi-reminiscent of the idealized fantastic version, whether that skill is in business, accounting, programming, marketing, or whatever.