The problem is innovation is measured as number of patents filed. Investors who want more innovation, judge how innovative a company is by number of patents. More patents -> more innovative. And so that's what managers optimize for.

The program is that is a ridiculously crude measure. Like measuring programmer output by lines of code, this idea that measuring innovation at such a micro level even makes sense, needs to die.

They saw Apple going away with that over and over again and thought "What the hell, let's do it".