Not only is it often better but it can literally enable you to get to market an order of magnitude faster (at with higher probability of success).
I'm working on a tool that makes running wire inside residential homes easier. It requires carving a channel on the back side of the baseboard.
My original idea required a mechanical tool with a motor [2]. We prototyped a working version of this but always felt that the manufacturing challenge would be large.
We ended up adapting the system to existing routers. That meant our product was just a series of extruded parts with almost no moving parts [1].