The comparison of thinking small to mom and pop shops is dead on accurate. And there are probably more small-visioned entrepreneurs relative to big-visioned entrepreneurs than there have been in the past.
However, there are are a lot of people with enormous visions right now that are simply in such early stages that they appear to be small. You have to start somewhere.
There are also two reasons that many big industries are not appearing to be disrupted right now. The first reason is that many of the huge industries are backed by so much money, poltics, and legality and so ingrained into society that they are virtually impossible to disrupt. That said, there is still a slow but steady disruption attempting to take place in education... Open Courseware, Khan Academy, etc.
The second reason is that much of the "low hanging fruit" of the economy has already been picked. This one is controversial. 50 years ago, we were doing really hard things, but things that did not necessarily require as deep of an understanding of an industry or science as we do today.
There are people trying to pick the "higher up" fruit today, but their pickings are not as obvious or exiting as they may have been 50 years ago. We are not seeing startups for flying cars or capital-intensive projects, however, small, simple software startups can sometimes solve incredible inefficiencies in the economy. Example: craigslist has revolutionized the rental market simply by making information easy to transmit and access.
However, there are are a lot of people with enormous visions right now that are simply in such early stages that they appear to be small. You have to start somewhere.
There are also two reasons that many big industries are not appearing to be disrupted right now. The first reason is that many of the huge industries are backed by so much money, poltics, and legality and so ingrained into society that they are virtually impossible to disrupt. That said, there is still a slow but steady disruption attempting to take place in education... Open Courseware, Khan Academy, etc.
The second reason is that much of the "low hanging fruit" of the economy has already been picked. This one is controversial. 50 years ago, we were doing really hard things, but things that did not necessarily require as deep of an understanding of an industry or science as we do today.
There are people trying to pick the "higher up" fruit today, but their pickings are not as obvious or exiting as they may have been 50 years ago. We are not seeing startups for flying cars or capital-intensive projects, however, small, simple software startups can sometimes solve incredible inefficiencies in the economy. Example: craigslist has revolutionized the rental market simply by making information easy to transmit and access.