As for the tonality of creative-fun always works and is welcome, especially in hard times. Edgy, overtly aggressive and irrelevant campaigns, like the recent spate of tone-deaf luxury and beer commercials just add to the irritation level. In my view, recent campaigns from Sprint, Apple, Hyundai are state of the art advertising.

This is very similar to the investing strategy that VCs take- as you point out and tends to work well. And this is where big companies have the advantage of resources- they can take risks on a number of products at one time.

I agree the age of the one big new product launch maybe be over – instead of swinging for the fences, a better approach is to spread the risk and grow incrementally.

Most big companies don't do enough to encourage and celebrate failure. Without a corporate culture that is able to embrace failure there will always be a risk/reward asymmetry that punishes anyone who might dare to fail. The entrepreneurs that succeed just iterate faster than others. They iterate faster by figuring out the potential points of failure and putting resources against getting to those critical junctures as quickly as possible. Managers in big companies tend to, either subconsciously or consciously, avoid reaching those same critical junctures. Gathering more information is a classic stalling technique risk-averse managers can easily defend as prudent management.

I love the comment of “The greatest asset to the entrepreneur is failure.” That is a really tough thing for us corporate guys to think about. We're taught and trained to aim for consistency…for small victories and continued success. You aren't suppose to go for the home run because when you are swinging for the fences, you might just strike out.