This is an interesting observation, but doesn't square with my experience (and I expect that of many HN readers), because he is obviously talking about two different types of growth (incubation vs evolution? blossoming vs mature development?) but doesn't specify what they are either within the biological metaphor, or the business paradigm.
That it's possible to be so individualistic that you can't even grasp the idea of the growth The Economist is talking about being not growth for the startups... That's truly flabbergasting.
It sounds more like the dandelion theory. Where the initial see might be in one location, and a flower might grow only to be geographically dispersed in the next generation of mature plant (not flowering bits). So the next generatoin will be "rooted" somwhere far away...If this was the metaphor, your plot of land might not have any growth in period T+1, because the "winds of change" or whatever. Of course the problem with this...it may be more or less dispersion...you're predicting the weather...etc. So, as analogies go maybe its not perfect.
The apparent answer is globalization and the downstream production being offshored.
The real reason is far more than national policy but much simpler that he alluded to. It is the natural drive of capital. Where it bleeds it leads, capital flows to where ever it can generate the profit with the most efficiency, which has driven the production system globalization, as the labor in developed countries no longer produce the best ROI, except for startup.