A recent Fast Company story makes the casethat big companies are essentially incapable of churning out new, hugely innovative products.

Questioning the status quo, cutting costs, eliminating hassles, bypassing middle-men, and removing fees certainly go a long way. But being naïve, clueless or wildly–and perhaps inappropriately–ambitious also helps.

I know the point he’s trying to make but, while he gives some lip-service to the idea, I’m not convinced he actually differentiates in his own mind between innovation and industry or business model disruption. The former can happen anywhere and often does, in fact, happen within large companies where someone figures out how to do something better or in a radically different way. The latter does, admittedly, rarely happen within companies like that since such disruption tends to put those businesses *out* of business.