When a large organization creates an "innovation team" it is nearly always performative.
[apg]As in, it creates the superficial perception of innovation, without any actual impact.
It's very easy to get superficial innovation by ignoring the real constraints.
The team can just do prototypes that demo well but are impossible to actually deploy at scale.
The prototyping team gets pats on the back and held up by leadership as being examples for everyone else to follow, with the implication that the legacy teams are lazy or over-complicating things.
The problem with the legacy teams is that they're stuck in a gnarly web of constraints that emerge with scale.
The superficial problems of performative innovation are easy.
Actually navigating the real constraints is hard, and requires a different kind of creativity.
Actual innovation emerges from the bottom up, a creative act.
To get innovation, you need to give space for acorns to have the possibility to grow.