> we might have some innovation in the food delivery system of our hotel chain

This is really relative to the size of that innovation, isn't it?

    > Imagine you employ me as a hotel manager, and I come to you and say: "sure I spent all our food budget internationally in three months, and sure I have nothing really to show for it, but for those three months, we had a lot of food fights"

This is exactly how startups and VC funding works, isn't it? You have an idea, give you cash to burn to prove the idea and business model. Many teams and ideas fail. But some small number of unicorns produce outsized returns to keep the whole thing going.

Imagine you employ me as a hotel manager, and I come to you and say: "sure I spent all our food budget internationally in three months, but we invented this new dish and now our restaurant is the hottest in town. Sure 95% of the food was wasted but now we can stop the waste and keep the popular dish."