Large Teams Develop Small Teams Disrupt

In this article people talk about how in science, at least retrospectively, small teams disrupt current understanding while larger teams develop ideas further. 

I found this article interesting for a lot of reasons. 
For starters, its interesting that team size correlates with how literature was read. Small teams tend to read older articles, patents, and software where larger teams focus only on the present. Interestingly as well, larger team sizes get more citations at least initially, and this likely leads to more funding and the reason for larger groups. For the small teams the citations come later and usually more disruptive. Typically also Nobel prize winners are disruptive. 
I find it a bit scary that for the current state of science I don't know anyone really working in a team less than 4, and its impossible to get any real money for that.  

In terms of a team dynamic I do think a smaller team allows you to play with more ideas, where a larger one focuses more on who is right. I guess also a hierarchy exists in the larger groups, so more people are just following the lead. 

Makes me want  to get my own team down to just a few people. It also makes it seem like selecting a team like this you could make conditions right to create disruptive research. To me its hard to decide if small team size is a prerequisite or a consequence, but it definitely seems important. 

It does seem like artists have known this for awhile though. It wasn't a team of people that made the Mona Lisa.