At least SpaceX actually made some quite fundamental changes in their approach to many things, since their original ideas did not work. They for example talked a lot about recovering their rockets, and none of that has worked at all. They changed from ablative to regenerative cooling. They experienced many failures (I think it is actually better to launch more often and experience some failures than launch years apart, because then you can't afford to fail at any cost and your schedule and cost will explode).

So in a sense he has this "new kid on the block" serial enterpreneur attitude where he bursts into a scene, stumbles a lot but finally seems to get something done quite right. Maybe it's him learning the tricks of the trade - or that just finding the right people takes a lot of time, or something else entirely. I at least don't know that closely what happens in these organizations.

It might be cool to read a book about something like that. I don't have high hopes of anyone getting the stories right though.