In his post “We’re not resources”, Mark Gregory Turansky is writing:
Talent matters.
Winning organizations build winning teams, they don’t schedule resources and they don’t break up a winning team. They pay top dollar for top talent knowing that it’s entirely talent that makes a winning team.
I had the opportunity to see this during my (short) carrier. Large team tends to force this “resource” direction (large company also obviously). Having a small team (lets say 5 to 7) of talent and senior can produce far more than a “regular” team of 30.
In the case of a large team, I prefer split into small teams (preferably using the architecture components as a guidance … yes I know, some agile folks will not agree) with leaders having a good leadership and management skills to do people management, not resource management.
Where I disagree from Mark’s point of view is the direct relation he emphasys between talent and dollars. Sure, talent people are more expensive, but dollars is not a way to get people efficient, simply a way to get them in. This article form Mary Poppendiek highlights very well this point.
Another skill that makes the difference (in addition to talent) is sense of responsibilities (I’m back to an agile point of view 
). The best talented developer will not help that much if he (or she) cares only about his code, do not try to understand code/work of the others, do not try to help level 3 support even if it’s a totally unkown area of the software for him/her.
Having teams sharing the responsibility of what they deliver, composed of talent, and leaded by a people manager (vs resource manager) is one of the best cocktail to quickly create creative softwares.