Think of the United States as a big company, and other countries as little companies. Even if our brains have better output than the average brains, if the little companies have 10 times as many brains as we do, then maybe one of their brains is going to get the thing right. There are a lot of smart people in countries like Singapore and China who have never had a world market before. The Internet is the end of time and space. That's a bit of an exaggeration, but it does reduce the importance of both.
Companies build their own coffins.
If you think of your company as a box, then there should be only one side to the box. The rest of the box should be open. Individuals, not companies, lead. When I was working at Intel, I was constrained by thinking about the world from Intel's point of view. The conventional wisdom is that corporations are the leaders that make things happen.