How does framing the question this way lead to deeper thinking or rather, yield different answers, than the typical questions of 'whats the bigger picture' or 'whats the company vision' ?
Reasoning based on concrete examples is easier to convey to other human meat brains for understanding and retention. If you start off with "big picture" or "vision" you're already into meaningless buzzword territory, and any discussion quickly derails practical advice/progress/suggestions.
Examples first, details later.
The Altair->Microsoft example also emphasizes the minimum condition necessary. What seems small but could be big (given the proper market growth and a mother who's also an IBM executive to get you free connections+business)?
Because the question worded that way is more specific. I asked myself the same question you ask and my answer was that the question "what is the company's vision?" or anything that has the words "vision" or "mission" immediately gets eyes rolling.
