Here you find the answer of Bjarne Stroustrup, the father of C++:
I basically agree with Edison: “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration”. There are few great ideas, and many good ones. Even the great ones require much work to validate them and to make them into useful tools for someone. I think he called it “invention”, though, but the main point is that you need a good idea (or several) carefully refined and embodied in some form of gadget, tool, or system to make a real innovation. An idea by itself isn’t much. Think how far the idea of “atoms” have come since the early Greeks. Think how far computing has come since Turing’s paper. And those were two of the most revolutionary ideas in history – the 99% perspiration is probably an underestimate.
(The whole interview you can read at the Addison-Wesely-Blog.)

Credit: themodulator.org

Posted by maz on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 18:51.