Bigger and better - or smaller and more niche?

I have been thinking about new business models for different size businesses now for a number of months, while we hear about big companies currently feeling the pinch in the media, we do not hear about the thousands and thousands of smaller companies out there who contribute to the worlds economy. What really interests me at the moment is the balance between the need for global multi-national corporations and the smaller niche companies. I have read a number of articles recently such as 'The Edge' by Jon and also an older article produced in wired.com which all seem to lead in a similar direction to my thoughts about the future economic landscape post-recession.

On a quick projection into the future there seems to be a number of different ways companies may evolve in the future. The wired.com article is interesting in the fact that there is a symbiosis between the huge global company and then there are smaller companies that have their independence from the large company but also need it to function and trade, just like Amazon in the article and other companies such as Ebay. Suddenly the idea of different and individual really starts to be a reality we can now for example use iTunes and it's software Genius to find tracks or artists that we would never have heard about before because they were not big enough to be stocked in your local record store.

I am working on a project currently where niche and cost are hugely important to the project and yet the project also has to cast a larger net as it is part of a wider awareness campaign. I hope to utilise the attributes of the small and large templates, to make the project as successful as possible. If anyone has any ideas or examples of work surrounding this kind of work I would be really interested in hearing about it.