Agreed, I think Fuller liked being an idea man, and wasn’t interested in the engineering iteration that is necessary to bring something truly new to market.
Maybe most people aren’t interested in that kind of work? It’s a long slog of working through the problems, and it can seem like a series of failures before you get close to a good product.
Which is exactly why Bucky's ideas are as widely adopted as they are today - which is basically zero. He had an amazing ability to identify future problems and design prototype solutions, but that's a very small percentage of the work it takes to bring something to reality and make an impact.
I honestly think Bucky was one of the most brilliant thinkers of the 20th century but his legacy will mainly be his thoughts (and designs and writings) alone. Even the best ideas fade into irrelevance unless acted upon. "Idea people" should take note.
It is not obvious to me that this is the case, just as it was not obvious to Buckminster Fuller, and it shows how much trial and error went into the design of the modern automobile. Even simple things oft taken for granted represent a huge amount of attempts to get things right and to work through the implications of alternate designs.