I generally agree but I think the are examples of some successful projects that did innovate. You could probably consider Gemini + Apollo a single megaproject as they were designed to run consecutively, building towards the moon.
ITER is under MBA/Political management. Even if the management team had all the time in the world, they could not complete the project on their own.
Especially in ground-breaking projects, this makes a huge difference. With many options open, deciding on how to proceed requires cross-subsystem trade-offs and weighing many different risks and challenges against each other: things that will grind any non-technical leadership to a halt as they request piles upon piles of reports from their underlings.
But I’m more curious about your second statement. Could you back that up with some evidence? How is ITER’s management and leadership “MBA/Political”? Is it really different from the other projects’? Such a statement needs to be backed up with some evidence.
Maybe a bit conspiracy minded, but maybe the real purpose is to give nuclear physicists something to do, so that the brains to make nukes are still around in case we ever need to start doing that again?
Gemini and Apollo had a nice one - the space race, more specifically, the fear of being bombed into oblivion from orbital stations without being able to do anything about it.
There's just not much incentive today, it makes business sense to use that funding as long as possible.