A lot of academic research is locked into a particular model where every project has to be doable by 1-3 main people, most of whom are "trainees", and produce a (positive) result in 1-3 years. It's not totally impossible to do other things, but the career incentives push pretty hard in this direction: trainees need 1st author papers, it's harder to fund postdocs after a few years, etc.

Proper staff scientist jobs would help break out of this mould and might even be more cost-effective by reducing churn in the lab and providing people with more guidance.