The whole point of the comment you replied to is that, if the "goal" is something innovative rather than just sustaining, then no, you don't end up in the same spot in those two scenarios.

But this is why some executives are better for some kinds of businesses and others are better for other kinds. Some executives don't understand your parent comment's point (or just don't find it comfortable), and will be very allergic to the "waste" necessary to experiment and iterate on poorly understood projects. Other executives will be uncomfortable just constantly figuring out how to optimize costs without damaging revenues.

A very tricky part of the lifecycle of many companies that get gigantic is to figure out when to flip this and start switching out the executive team to focus on a different model.