There is a bunch of reasons why the enterprise and government sectors (in some parts of the world) are leaning towards Drupal. I am unsure how much of that really applies to Laravel, which is much less of a product compared to Drupal. Selling a product is easier than selling a box of tools.

I can't help the feeling that apples and oranges will be harmed in the making of this thread.

Because it is a CMS?

Drupal being a CMS surely plays a role, because as far as I can tell, that is what it is being utilised for mostly in the markets you mention.

Timing?

I do not think so. I believe it is down to open source projects now being mature enough to compete with and outshine proprietary solutions. Besides what the software can deliver, stability and reliability are key factors for enterprise and gov. markets - so scale of the community and the commercial infrastructure around it plays a role here. enterprise likes doing business with enterprise and there are a good number of big, drupal-centric agencies and service partners today.

How Laravel can learn from Drupal to get into the enterprise space and large organizations.

Drupal has never had the greatest architecture and learning the Drupalisms of which there are plenty can be painful (nicely put). What Drupal does right imo, is that it solves a problem (in an ugly fashion maybe, but still). The amount of functionality you can have out of the box is incredible. The drupal.org platform with its curated repository of modules and documentation plays a big role and is something I think would benefit Laravel as well, even if it probably won't be a "download/install module X and be done" process due to the flexibility that Laravel provides in how you build your app.

But most importantly, grow the community and the rest will take care of itself.