@yosh agreed.

Many places I have worked where they had basically no budget available for projects.

If I could propose a solution that didn't cost them anything, no need for a CapEx budget process to go through, it was a win!

Scrounging around for unused resources (e.g. older hardware) and finding suitably licensed libre/free open source software to run which with some configuration could solve things, meant they were just paying me for my time which they were already doing, and what I was able to present them with to do what needed doing was icing on the cake.

Once upon a time, I also worked for an early online adult content producer. Due to puritanical reasons, some companies would not sell us their products, so once again getting to create in-house alternatives (again, with my preferences for building on top of libre/free open source software) while sometimes NIH syndrome was something which I was able to excel at in getting problems solved, even in instances where "the market" maybe had products, we just were prohibited from purchasing them.

The organizations which can simply buy their way out of whatever needs doing? Probably aren't solving any novel problems in my experience. They're pretending to be businesses while actually just being apex consumers and marketing facades.

The number of companies which simply rebrand some ODM/OEMs' products as their own (e.g. "Amazon Basics" Costco's Kirkland, Alienware, etc.), are indicative of such lack of innovation. In such instances what they are really involved with is branding and margins focused marketing. They don't innovate, so their strategies mimic monopolies so they can push out competitors.

Lamentably, I've also been a contributor to products which have been "white labelled" and resold to others. In some instances, I have observed downstream bugs which were things fixed years earlier, because the downstream clients never grew a clue. Most live streaming for example, to me, is in such a state these days. ;(