Depends what kind of technological advancement and what scale. New graphics tech for games? Sure, a small team might do better at communicating and getting features out quicker. A new, bigger kind of particle collider for high energy physics experiments? You need a good team just for one of the many of kinds of magnets, another just for a particular kind of detector, and so on for thousands of components (and advancements in software for all of the above) which need to be pushed forwards.

(I know you basically said as much, just wanted to expand on it a bit)