There was a huge difference between becoming a pioneer and a follower in new technologies.
A pioneer had to invest a disproportionately large amount of time, effort and manpower into developing useful new technologies.
A follower merely had to wait for the former to do all of the work, then proceed to reap most of the rewards while paying just a fraction of the cost.
Ves was both a pioneer and a follower in technology. Most good mech designers tended to have at least a little bit of the former, or else they wouldn't have been able to make much progress.
There were so many fields of technology that no single mech designer could become a leading authority in all of them. The more sophisticated the tech, the greater the time, dedication, ingenuity and affinity required to progress beyond the prevailing standards.
