Boil-the-ocean attempts can create boiling knowhow cauldrons.

Over-resourced boil-the-ocean boondoggles can still produce the knowhow to later allow distilling a differentiated, game-changing component.

For example, Golang came out of the Plan 9 boil-the-ocean plans.

A great simmering cauldron of knowhow, heated by a highly-resourced sponsor.

The people soaking in that cauldron will implicitly pick up:

Things to not bother doing–that they explored in great depth and realized are fundamentally nonviable in non-obvious, hard-to-explain ways.

Small, clever things that do work: judo moves, flicks of the wrist with massive implications.

People who were simmering in that cauldron will have the knowhow that can be catalyzed later into world-changing things in the right contexts.

Just because that cauldron didn't make anything itself, doesn't mean it won't indirectly catalyze something world-changing.