Aligning the Stars

There are plenty of analogies you may have come across when people describe how to build teams that are able to deliver things way beyond anybody's expectations, in business world. We all get enamored by various performing arts/sports activities, as they don't tend to be as mundane as the world of business(Well, we haven't asked the players, but that would be digressing). One of these analogies often used is from the sports world where coaches/managers pick a star player, say a Michael Jordan, and then align rest of the team for supporting this player by being a very effective role players. How well has this model served the business? I have no study to quote for its effectiveness. But, I was wondering about something in my other blog and thought that there may be something lacking, that could make us too excited, and, that we could supplement this approach with, something... e.g. by replicating it... well someone guiding the basketball team, someone else say a football team...

Well most of the product development growth for this product set seems to have come from hardware side, and, then they got around to doing the software development(protocols, specifically). So "a star" from hardware side was supported by role players from software side, but a "a star" from software side from the get go would have delivered so much more value, so much sooner to the users that find this product useful or even exciting for solving their problems. Just a thought… your thoughts are welcome.