It's an amusing story, I've seen this countless times as well. I think what finally sunk in for me was that if you're focused on saving money or efficiency on small projects then the upper limit of benefit to the company is less than the budget for the project. Instead if you focus on optimizing for the market, the profits can be unbounded essentially, and any wasted money to get to market is simply part of the learning process.

And if you're the contractor having to run around as the plans change, well just make sure you get paid enough :)