Yeah that's one of my pet peeves with lean-startup type stuff. It's great for consumer products that aren't too different from what people are used to but not that useful for work that requires a lot of R&D (since there what you end up with often depends on constraints you learn about during the R&D process).

Look at a technology that has had a massive impact on the world: fracking. People pursued that for many years with limited results before they were able to do it successfully/economically.