The same thought occurred to me; I think it's probably more along the lines of "faster and relying on more intuition".

I don't think this is a new concept; Jon Gertner in his excellent book "The Idea Factory" writes how the researchers at Bell Labs switched from basic research to development during WW2 and operated in a similar way. If anything, the urgency of development in the war effort resembled a startup in how it accomplished within a few short years projects that would have taken decades in peacetime.