I’d say this is the case always, 100% of the time, despite the perhaps honorable initial intentions of a founder to “serve” people. Corporations don’t give a fiddler’s for employees, truly. They pretend to. They fulfill corporate responsibility.

What I would add, assuming I didn’t miss the part where you already mentioned it, is that innovation requires the space to work that’s free from pressure to perform, to meet quotas, to follow established corporate agenda. Because innovation is an organic creative process that needs free thinkers with flair, and an ability to think laterally, to free associate and to play at work. Innovation can’t be formulated in my opinion, it has to be allowed to come about in it’s own without “planning” or manipulation. Black Swan kind of stuff.