The right problem

Reading "The Art of Unix Programming", I came across this -

"It is better to solve the right problem the wrong way than the wrong problem the right way".

Encover definitely is solving the right problem. We started at a time when the market was down and survived the downturn. A lot of companies which solved the wrong problem (may be bcoz whatever they were solving was not a problem yet) the right way couldn't survive.

So how do you really distinguish the right from the wrong?

source: http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s04.html