Paul Graham writes about people, programmers and bosses. I agree. He left out to mention much came from the Google 20% projects. It does support his theory.
I often wonder myself how big companies can actually stay in business. There is real work. When stuff gets done. The core. Things get made. Be it a line of code or a shoe. And then there is all the work around it: To pay the heating bills for the building that the bean counter sits in that supervises the expenses of the health care plan of the person that buys the spare parts for the forklifts that move the pakaging for the shoes from one side to the next.
Since technology can facilitate inter company communication and collaboration it might be that we will see allot of small companies that work one project. As long interfaces between these unit remain efficient they can keep the initiative of a small group and still work on a project that is of larger size. In an ideal world these groups would compete on clearly defined terms which would optimise everything very very fast.