"Genuinely new, ambitious design work comes from tiny, elite teams; you only scale headcount once you already know what you're building."
Evidence from the Archive
Apple
The original Mac had 20 people on the patent. The iPhone had 24. These were not massive groups — they were tiny elite teams that knew each other's taste
Bob Baxley uses Apple product archaeology to argue that genuinely new work comes from bands, not orchestras; you scale only after you know what you're building
Baxley's argument is rooted in product archaeology. He points out that the original Mac had 20 people on the patent and the iPhone had 24 on the Project Purple patent. These are not massive groups — they're tiny elite teams that knew each other's taste and could hold a shared vision in their heads. He generalizes to a law of creative work: too many people is poison for figuring out something new.
But he draws a sharp before/after line. While you're still figuring out what the thing is, keep it tiny. Once you've 'figured out you're building Disneyland,' bring in lots of people to execute the line experience for the new ride in Tomorrowland. The mistake he sees repeatedly is companies scaling headcount before they have the vision, which produces confused output.
In Bob's own words: "I just always have to point out to people that there are 20 people that worked on the original Mac. I mean it's 20 of them, that's it, 20. Susan Kare was one of them, Andy Hertzfeld, you go through the list, 20 of them are on the patent. There's 24 that are on the iPhone patent... These are not massive massive groups doing these things." (On how the most iconic Apple products came from tiny, named teams — not scaled design orgs.)