"Spend money to make money" is diametrically opposed to the entrepreneurial idea that you don't need to spend money to make money, you realize. There are, in fact, two major divisions of how businesses are run, even if it's not formally recognized. There are businesses that focus solely on the idea of spending money to make money (ie. their focus is all on getting as much money as possible), and there are businesses which focus on NOT spending money to make money (ie. their focus is on being as profitable as possible).

The fact of the matter is that businesses do tend to focus almost exclusively on either the top line or bottom line of their balance sheets in regards to money. While it's nice to say that all businesses aim for a profit (and it is true), the reality of the matter is that not all businesses understand HOW to increase profit. Many think that increasing revenue will automatically increase profit, which isn't true at all if the cost of generating the revenue is greater than the revenue generated.

Like many, you're in the idealist trap where all businesses are competently run and have no flaws in their financial reasoning. This is not and never has been the case. Businesses are schizophrenic affairs, with varying levels of understanding throughout individual institutions on how financial matters work. And worse, many of the accounting departments of these firms either are run by people who don't understand how money works, or are rendered impotent by other departments. The former is an issue of poor education (which is surprisingly and disappointingly common), and the latter is an issue of poor administration (which is also surprisingly and disappointingly common).

That is because your "entrepreneurial idea" only exists in your head. 

The real world has phrases like seed money and startup capital for a reason.  Banks offer small business loans and the government sponsors grants to get ideas off the ground for this reason.

No, the fact is that they don't.  They focus on profit as well as a slew of other ratios to measure their business' financial health in various areas ranging from a debt-to-equity, assets-to-liabilities, gross margin, profit margin, and more.  Organizations will focus on the various cost/benefits of many facets of their respective businesses from supply chain management (where applicable) to the stepping of the increase in variable cost with certain decisions and initiatives.

They may like to highlight the big fuzzy revenue numbers for some of their more casual stockholders, but the people running the company, the learned investors, and the professional holding/speculating firms are most definitely focusing on the more important areas.  They want to see their financial documents (income statement, balance sheet, statement of cash flows, statement of retained earnings) and ascertain the real financial health of the business.

You don't seem to realize that a lot of companies ranging from middling size to large don't actually even do their accounting in-house.  As you climb higher in the business world, names such as Deloitte Touche, KPMG, and Grant Thornton will become names to know and recognize.  Many companies choose to outsource their accounting/booking needs because it's cheaper, more reliable, and provides accountability on booking errors.  This doesn't just apply to large companies either.  Even companies whose revenue (yes that's an important word here) barely touches the one million dollar mark (smaller than you think) often prefer outsourcing to a professional accounting firm based on the above benefits.

Believe whatever you like but please click those links and read through the information I'm trying to provide you with.

Alright, so you're basically declaring the financial knowledge I've gleaned from multiple sources to be false, just because you don't believe it's possible? And then you cite a few sources to back up your claims? You're an odd one, I'll give you that.

The short of it is that you show little actual understanding of finance. You show that you have knowledge of finance, yes, but knowledge is easy to come by. It isn't surprising, as most people don't grasp how money works even though they think they do. Knowing the niggling little details of what generates profit doesn't mean you actually understand how profit is generated. It's a bit like the difference between knowing the details of what makes a car, and knowing how to drive a car.

Oh, and a piece of financial advice I've often heard is that you should never let somebody else manage your money for you. Which makes many firms outsourcing their accounting even more incredibly idiotic than the firms that minimize or mismanage their accounting departments.

what are you talking about ? The wii isn't exacly what you would refere to as powerful, and if i remember right the gamecube launched after the ps2 ? i'm not sure, but it wasn't "that much more powerful" it had about 100 more mhz processor and a few other things. Not exacly record breaking. Another thing is that you say they've never needed to, yet they just said that making the good product would have probably sent them there at first with the wii, yet they werent willing to go there. That was my only point.