From a 1995 interview with Computerworld Information Technology Awards Program with Steve Jobs.

An answer to the question, “.. Do you think it will ever be possible for a new major start-up company to develop if they're going to focus on major applications or software? Will there ever be another?” by Steve Jobs.

I think yes. Intellectually one might sometimes say in despair no, but I think yes. And the reason is because human minds settle into fixed ways of looking at the world and that's always been true and it's probably always going to be true.

I've always felt that death is the greatest invention of life. I'm sure that life evolved without death at first and found that without death, life didn't work very well because it didn't make room for the young, who didn't know how the world was fifty years ago, who didn't know how the world was twenty years ago. But who saw it as it is today, without any preconceptions, and saw and dreamed how it could be based on that. They were not satisfied based on the accomplishment of the last thirty years. But who were dissatisfied because the current state didn't live up to their ideals. Without death there would be very little progress.

One of the things that happen in organizations as well as with people is that they settle into ways of looking at the world and become satisfied with those and the world changes and keeps evolving and new potential arises but these people who are settled in don't see it. That's what gives start-up companies their greatest advantage. [That is] The sedentary point of view of large companies.

And, In addition to that, large companies do not have very efficient communication paths from the people closest to some of these changes at the bottom of the company to the top of the company which are the people making the big decisions. There may be people at lower levels of the company that see these changes coming but by the time the word ripples up to the highest levels where they can do something about it, sometimes ten years passes. Even in the case where part of the company does the right thing at the lower levels, usually the upper levels screw it up somehow. I mean IBM and the personal computer business is a good example of that.

I think as long as humans don't solve this human nature trait of sort of settling into a world view after a while, there will always be opportunity for young companies as well as young people to innovate. As it should be.