To net this out: Pragmatists evaluate and buy whole products. The generic product, the product you ship, is a key part of the whole product, make no mistake. But once there are more than one or two comparable products in the marketplace, then investing in additional R&D at the generic level has a decreasing return, whereas there is an increasing return from marketing investments at the levels of the expected, the augmented, or the potential product. How to determine where to target these investments is the role of whole product planning.
