Bah... Academia heaps prestige upon the person who hits it big early, and from then on they don't get the same kind of feedback.<p>Imagine at Google: "Of course, Sergey, that's an awesome idea". But if it's not then everyone is wasting a lot of time. Chances are it isn't. Sergey had a lot of bad/mediocre ideas before he came up with PageRank, and has had a lot of bad/mediocre ones since.<p>The point is that ideas are more a function of being at the right place at the right time and acting on it than they are about some particular genius.<p>A good analogy is Scrabble. When you hit an awesome word early on it can still result in a loss, b/c you keep trying too hard and over thinking things. Also, in life, like Scrabble, some of it has to do with the letters that happen to be in your tray.<p>This is part of the myth that genius is a phenomenon of the young. That is luck. True genius involves sweat and perseverance.