You weren't meant to have a boss 18 years ago
The challenge I see is how to do a really big project with small independent groups of people. Open source is one concept that helps. In that paradigm, not everyone has to start from scratch. You can grab someone else's code and add functionality to it.
My pet project of the moment is to develop an "Industry wide SOA" with a defined interface between the services. This would allow entry into (in this case the medical) industry by smaller groups that can't do it all. See the beginning of the idea at: http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/km/med-research/archives/open-soa...