I'd argue that the brilliance of SpaceX is the opposite. They stick to technology and markets that are proven and use technically conservative approaches. Falcon 9 is about relentless improvement in small ways, not bold new ideas -- unless you count not getting caught up in the politics and psychology of bold new ideas as a bold new idea.

Sure, they talk about Mars, and in-space refueling seems radical, but they've yet to succeed at doing anything radical... yet.

Rumor has it they were struggling with the payload fraction w/ the first generation of Starship and they switched to a second generation that struggles with blowing up. A big advantage of the two-stage architecture is that you can develop the two stages independently. Presumably they will eventually get Starship to orbit and bring it home, they will have plenty of time to improve it get the payload fraction up just as they did with F9.