A lot of engineers never had experience on the shop floor and were treated like gods by some and given free reign to demand exactly what they had envisioned. This lack of shop time caused them to make Swiss watches when all that was needed was a Timex.
I worked with a brilliant designer once but his designs needed to be simplified as much as possible to increase the profit from the finished article, that was my job. Thankfully he was one of the nicest people you could wish to meet and when I said x number of pieces could be made into one piece he agreed without rancour. He could also do cartoons of people that you recognized at once, I still have a few he did of me.