Wild take, copying matters. If you have a great idea, and no capital and I copy you and have more capital (money, social), I can deploy my capital to crush you in the market. This very idea that ideas don't matter is hogwash, you can say that idea alone is not enough, but it matters. This is why big companies sometimes get sued by the govt, they copy smaller companies ideas, add it into their already established product for free and stifle growth for the world.
You have almost certainly seen that mechanism in action, even though you don't realize it. The most visible way that it works is through the sale of those patents to patent trolls (usually after the company has nothing left) and the resulting big-money lawsuits against big corporations that ripped them off.
