Having someone with a strong vision to rally around and attract others with similar views probably works wonders in itself. This could be someone powerful at a large company attracting like minded employees, or a small company whose founder and mission mission attracts specific hires, which explains to a degree some of the performance of small companies (or lack of performance of large ones if you see it that way).

Maybe Jobs' strength was that he had strong visions in multiple areas, and was able to have a few different stacks of people really in line with each and keep them moving separately?