We need to be more specific than "make money". The purpose is to maximize the discounted cash flow. I.e. to max out the present value of the company's profits

We need to be more specific than "make money". The purpose is to maximize the discounted cash flow. I.e. to max out the present value of the company's profits over the life of the company, or in other words, max out the value of the company. That means that you might engage in R&D for projects that have a chance to become really big in the future. It can also mean pursuing an ever larger range of smaller profitability projects (still adds to your profit). This may not be what the CEO is optimizing for. Even assuming a CEO is an all knowing oracle in terms of predicting future profits and even assuming they are aware of all the details of what a large company is working on (hint: they're not either). The rest of the organization has a life of its own as well with individuals optimizing for different things that are rarely in perfect alignment with the company's goals. On top of all that, shipping software may not be the business driver. Promising things, demos, good salesmanship, may all contribute to a business more than "shipping software". Look at Tesla's "FSD". I.e. it's not even clear that shipping sooner with amazing value/quality to the end user drives the business side that strongly. Often software is not sold directly to the end user. Even when it is the end user may have other things driving their money spending decisions. I would say it likely can be a driver but you also need the kind of organization that is able to leverage that in the market.