Not as a slight against you personally (I'm talking statistically, and you may mean something else), but whenever such articles pop up, I always expect a businessman to chime in about how only a superhumanly talented or lucky team can do such things. It mirrors my real-life observations of businessmen "innoculating" their subordinates against such dangerous ideas when they come up. (Implying that they and their underlings are inferior.)
(This isn't unique to corporations. Even progressive nonprofits seem to dislike working with outspoken, truly horizontal organizations where self-management is the norm. Because they ironically have bosses and other trappings of corporate hierarchy. Their employees often observe that the new boss is like the old.)
37signals have taken pains to explain that, of course, any company has to think for themselves and not ape some blogpost they read.
I had the benefit of exposure to members of the 37signals team in their early days when they did contract work, built their remarkable "redesigns", etc.
It was crystal clear to me instantly that they were ABSURDLY talented, their design work looked like nothing else at the time and influenced an entire generation of not only web designers, but entrepreneurs, etc.
So while I agree that "anybody can do anything", 37signals started the race with an incredible lead in just raw, unfiltered talent.
(This isn't unique to corporations. Even progressive nonprofits seem to dislike working with outspoken, truly horizontal organizations where self-management is the norm. Because they ironically have bosses and other trappings of corporate hierarchy. Their employees often observe that the new boss is like the old.)
37signals have taken pains to explain that, of course, any company has to think for themselves and not ape some blogpost they read.