There are plenty of hard problems that are unrelated to scientific research where you need more than just "normal" engineers. Look at the number of failed projects at big companies such as Amazon and Microsoft, they failed because "normal" engineers couldn't pull it off.
hah. i'm sorry but this is extremely naive. projects don't succeed of fail solely on the technical chops of the engineers. it's a whole "ecosystem" that has to work and most projects I've seen failing are due to politics/bikeshedding at upper management level.
Your experience is different from mine. I have worked at big tech companies and have seen too many projects fail due to lack of technical chops. Do they fail for other reasons too? Sure, such as not finding product-market fit, but at some companies they start with guaranteed product-market fit because they are copying a competitor!
