It’s definitely possible to take the evolution route (I don’t quite agree that there’s a clear dichotomy between revolution and evolution) and have a goal in mind. I’m sure Steve Jobs had already envisioned the App Store when he was working on iPhone 1.0. The difference between complex and simple lies in focus. The reason it’s not possible to build complex systems from scratch is that you just can’t focus on so many different parts/components and integrate them together as well. Apple builds successful products because they focus on a few things rather than do everything all at once.

As for your other point, I believe Gall’s law (your quoted bit) holds true for all cases but the other rule I added about each intermediate step being useful might only be true for some cases (perhaps, more for user-facing products).

You’re right that the blogpost might only pertain to “evolutionary products and startups”. I wrote it with software in mind but my guess is that it’s also mostly true for other kinds of things. I need to think further about them.