Behind the success of most corporate giants is usually the not-so-invisble-hand of government connections. The 1960's organization man economy was a result of the tremendous growth of government during the New Deal and the World War. IBM was a small company until it received a giant government contract to run the Social Security accounting system. GE grew enormously from government spending on space, nuclear energy, and advanced AT&T's dominance was a result of nationalizing the telephone industry in 1918. The economies of scale for Wall St. companies are solely the result of the Federal Reserve's "too big to fail" policy ( and also regulatory costs).

I think that the early 1900's were a more economical natural time. There were some big corporations, but the economy was largely dominated by small businesses and startups. The 1960's were the anomaly, a direct result of the creation of the American mega-state.

Today the government and large government connected corporations have calcified. Look at NASA. It's not sexy to work there anymore because everyone knows that it hasn't done a single interesting thing since it put a man on the moon. But because it is a government program, it cannot fail and be replaced with something more dynamic. It's a zombie organization, not really alive, but unable to die.

But till recently this was an anomalous route that tended to be followed only by outsiders. It was no coincidence that the great industrialists of the nineteenth century had so little formal education. As huge as their companies eventually became, they were all essentially mechanics and shopkeepers at first.

In 1900, getting an education was anomalous. Most smart people were mechanics and shopkeepers, and if they were ambitious and talented, they created successful startups. The hacker in 1900 viewed a college degree like a hacker today views an MBA - as an expensive way to rot your brain. And finally, for those who got engineering degrees, I doubt starting a company was that uncommon. Off the top of my head, the very first student at Stanford ( Herbert Hoover) did indeed start his own company. So the tradition has been there for a long time.

Now I would guess that practically every Stanford or Berkeley undergrad who knows how to program has at least considered the idea of starting a startup. East Coast universities are not far behind, and British universities only a little behind them.

In the 2000's your average ambitious Ivy league graduate wanted to work for Wall St. The rest would go into consulting, academia, or get a profession degree. Very few people think of doing startups. If the Wall St. bubble never comes back, and graduates are forced to make an honest living, perhaps there will be a trend towards doing more startups.

Fifty years later, startups are ubiquitous in Silicon Valley and common in a handful of other US cities, but they're still an anomaly in most of the world.

Startups are an anomaly in Europe, Japan, and Korea because of government regulations. China is filled with startups because it has the freest market in the world. Startups are common in Sillicon valley because it is the home of the tech industry, which is the most unregulated industry in the United States.