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However, for everyone of those examples there are many counter-examples: Intel came out of Shockley, ex-IBMers went onto found several other companies (SAP, Peoplesoft,...)...

So Im skeptical of this outsider/insider characterization, IMHO it's almost always the individuals.

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Yeah this feels like an example of a narrative that sounds compelling but could easily be overstated. How many breakthrough innovations have “insiders” made that aren’t as noteworthy because they are more expected? Google was given as an example by the parent comment. Google also made a lot of breakthrough innovations in the distributed systems and browsers space after their outsiders phase.

I agree. The iPhone is the perfect counter-example to this narrative: perhaps one of the most revolutionary pieces of hardware or software in the last 20 years, it came out of Apple, an established company at the time.

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