Sounds like an interesting pattern in general and I would love to hear the opinion from somebody who used this already in some bigger projects.
Although I am a bit afraid that this results in some deep nested component structure. For example, say you have a Page component, inside that a Sidebar component, inside that a Navigation component, inside that a List component, inside that Item-Group components and inside that you have the actual Item components. This would already be like 5 levels of nesting. Now add Routing components etc. to the mix...
That also my biggest concern, but much of it could you do in their own component. Like if we took redux-connect.. then you could have an "render prop component" I'm both the root and in the list, which will make the List more isolated.
I have also abandoned HoC, and used this pattern for a few weeks. My only problem is that there can some render callback hell when having multiple components, which wound mot occur when using HoC..