In Malcolm Gladwell’s _The Tipping Point_ he gives an interesting example of a company that operates by the rule of 150, so one way around the entropy issue may be purely organizational.

Either way, I think it is correct that large companies are fundamentally flawed and it takes herculean effort to fight against that and make them productive. Most of the management books and paradigms du jour probably do little more than throw a rock in the pond. We see the ripples and think something has fundamentally changed, but in a while it settles down to the same state it was at previously. Time to throw another rock.

Speaking of a certain large sized company and what it should really be doing to avoid these issues: http://www.myshoggoth.com/2008/02/how-microsoft-s.html.