On the other hand, your advice to “morph it like crazy” might be misunderstood as an invitation to a take a shotgun approach without pursuing high-return ideas that may be slower to bear fruit. According to Warren Schirtzinger and high tech bibles like Crossing the Chasm, the number one reason high-tech companies fail is the lack of market focus, i.e. “emerging high-tech companies often do anything possible to generate revenue and in the process try to be all things to all people.”

Some ideas take more time than others. Even penicillin languished after it was first discovered by Alexander Fleming. It took nine years for Ernst Boris Chain and Howard Florey to more fully understand its potential and find a practical way to produce it. A less technical example is the Frisbee, whose inventor, Walter Frederick Morrison, passed away this month. In his obituary it was noted that Wham-O took seven years to turn the toy into a raging success.

A good follow-up topic would be, how do you know when it’s time to morph your idea? Entrepreneurs often get discouraged when they take their new ideas to mainstream customers in an established market. As Clay Christenson points out, the traditional customers in a market will be inherently unreceptive (to say the least!) to new and disruptive ideas. This isn’t to say that all ideas rejected by the traditional customers are good; the key is to find and appeal to an emerging customer base that will eventually subsume the traditional market. And then, as you say, execute with flexibility, but also with focus.