You are on the right path, but I think you are off by a bit. Every company has more work they want to do than budget allows. However some of those things won't pay off fast enough. That is they have product vision but are smart enough to realize that those extra things they won't be able to do are not things customers are willing to pay extra for today.
Companies have finite budget to pursue these ideas, and never enough to fully pursue all of them simultaneously.
It's management's job to prioritize the order in which they're pursued, subject to available budget.
In the last 5 years, leadership at the Mag 7 has been bad at this core responsibility.
* Alphabet: failed to productize its AI research
* Amazon: completely ignoring the erosion of customer trust in its core logistics business driver (warehouse retail)
* Apple: Vision Pro and lack of product vision (outside of their microprocessor group)
* Meta: VR. Enough said
* Microsoft: Windows. Enough said
* Nvidia: Granted, probably the one standout, but they did get the golden ticket to own a shovel factory during a gold rush
* Tesla: Everything
Objective check: Mag 7 ex Nvidia only outperformed the S&P 500 by +17% over the last 5 years, in contrast to prior periods (and much of that thanks to Alphabet boosting the average)
