Every non-startup wastes incredible amounts on fads and other inefficiencies while still lasting perfectly fine. It's just business as usual. I could probably save my current largest clients many millions/year on dev if the CTO (& his tech leads) wasn't such a fad guy; he basically pops on Twitter every morning and starts sending over 'new stuff the team should look at'. There are 1000s of applications in that company and there is an incredible rot-fighting effort because of the use of the latest and the greatest frameworks. But millions/year is chump-change for this company so it's not happening any time soon. He does deliver, so the perception is that he gets things done; that entire teams are busy just updating 1 year old code dependencies for 0 business benefit is taken for granted.
If it's chump change, then it isn't really that much waste. Majority of the funds are going to proven successful methods, and the chump change goes on future bets on what might take off.
I don't see anything wrong with it. This is basically how evolution works as well. Take 99% of a proven thing, randomize 1% and then either keep the change or discard it later as not useful.
A lot of things which are now proven successful ideas were once indistinguishable from fads.
