[jyothi]

I think its more of a change in the thought process. A lot of times identifying the problem you are trying to solve (lets say u did start thinking of that as an idea) - provides you the solutions for the market, positioning, pricing and more. So the author's point is if you don't have a real problem you are solving - you are probably not headed anywhere. Eventually even if u call it an idea - you still got to figure out the problem to tell the user why to adopt it.

The way I see it the take away is more about the way you think about your product than about where or how you started or what terminology you give.

And also as edw519 there would be very few outliers and of course they are a gamble. Every invention is. As you mention google and twitter you should also note that figuring out how to build a business out of these ideas is hard. All search engines faced the problem - advertising made it a huge success but did come very late. Twitter for a long time now has been on the same Q.

So it does make sense to think of your product as an idea to create something ground breaking but for most part, figuring out the problem you solve simplifies a lot.