The other point to make is that innovation tends to either be not obvious or too obvious. Innovation at Tesla is 'too obvious' and hence the company has very high valuations and a low margin of safety for an investor. Amazon on the other hand had a lot of innovation in their business model but this wasn't very obvious to an outsider.
Building moat works when you can have large amounts of average employees and business you are in is proven.
Yes we need innovation, but if I look at what was going on with crypto/nft, I would say that was not worth much.
Besides if someone thinks that innovation is the only hard thing to do - sustainably running company with more than 50 employees for decades is already really hard thing.
Most innovation is capital intensive, even if that’s just hiring and paying the right people. Moats give you that, as well as room to be patient.
(I've half my money on growth, half on value - value is much easier to manage)