the disease periodically infects me too... it's endemic in the writing ecosystem, I've been trying to catch myself pretending to understand stuff but it's hard
Not really - science/philosophy people who do understand things often just write them down or fail to implement, and then execute people mine their ideas (and don't necessarily understand them).
It often takes both kinds to do something, and the "understanding" is shared.
Historically, there are plenty of examples going both ways, spanning: thinker discovered / doer commercialized, thinker inspired doer, doer discovered / thinker explained, and plenty more.
Per Stiglitz's "Creating a Learning Society" - he found evidence (using the frame of a production frontier) that most firms are very far from the frontier, hence new tech/techniques don't affect them as much as easing adoption. (ie doers)
This would on net support your claim.
you're looking through the specific lens of technology adoption and stuff, I'm ranting about too many annoying just-so explainer threads on twitter, of the "time for some game theory" variety ๐