> And if the answer is no, I guess the logical conclusion is that internal tools make very little difference to the success of consumer product companies.
That is on the implicit assumption that businesses are reasonable, and accurately know how to manage tradeoffs. Your counter-hypothesis seems rather likely to me, if we look at the internal behavior of a company. When negotiating, the more dots that you need to connect before reaching "and then we get more money", the weaker of a negotiating position you have. It's the same reason why sales teams get bonuses for making sales, but developers don't get bonuses for enabling sales.
That is on the implicit assumption that businesses are reasonable, and accurately know how to manage tradeoffs. Your counter-hypothesis seems rather likely to me, if we look at the internal behavior of a company. When negotiating, the more dots that you need to connect before reaching "and then we get more money", the weaker of a negotiating position you have. It's the same reason why sales teams get bonuses for making sales, but developers don't get bonuses for enabling sales.