IBM's infamous "Black Team" (2002)
This story made me think. Until now I had the impression that mediocrity at large corporations is inevitable no matter how many smart people they employ, simply due to the size of the corporation. For every talented, competent employee they have 10 average or below-average employees. Even at Google, even (and especially) at Microsoft. Competent people cannot choose who to work with so whatever extra they do is lost in the mediocrity that surrounds them.<p>After reading this article I have realized that even at large corporations if you make isolated and largely idependent small teams of highly competent people that can select their members themselves, you can create "startup" bubbles inside the organization that can deliver outstanding results. Maybe this is the way to go when growing large, from a medium-sized enterprise to a large corporation?