I suspect part of the motivation for this is an environment that expects everyone to "work on something BIG" (as you say) all the time and a hyper focus on the

I suspect part of the motivation for this is an environment that expects everyone to "work on something BIG" (as you say) all the time and a hyper focus on the short term. Ambitious people who recognize the game will play it to advance their career regardless of how it might affect the long term prospect of the company or products. Generally, a company culture that is more focused on delivering tangible value, and ability to recognize and fix behaviors that optimize for short term/career gaining behavior will succeed in keeping this in check. This gets much more difficult to do in larger companies and organizations though. Maybe its some kind of "scale disease"; some natural law that will make larger companies incapable of innovation the bigger they get.