I've watched them erode away institutional knowledge at the individual contributor level, either letting people retire without trying to document what they know, or laying off people who know everything about a specific Nike niche. But they think it is ok because a handful of VPs surely must know everything! They don't want anybody below the sr. dir. level to have any real input. They say they do, but as soon as you try to do something different or advocate for an idea that goes against the status quo you are in trouble. It's all too common for bright people in the trenches to say "this is what I am seeing and what I think we should do" only for their leadership to completely ignore them in favor of whatever they did that one time 20 yrs ago when they were on that one project.
There is a serious lack of innovative product vision & direction at the highest levels. It's just storytelling and bullsh-t. Who can sell their bad idea best is the name of the game, not any intelligent, rational process for objectively determining what is or isn't a good idea. When you have a culture that rewards silver-tongued ambition, this is what you get.
This is all anecdotal from my 10+ yrs in AIC/NXT. I've worked directly with innovation leadership and seen it all firsthand...
Re-posting this from @1nhy+1pZFXneK because it should be seen by more people.