Nice breakdown, Nothing to see here!
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE: WOTC/HASBRO
Given the product, there isn't really much room for innovation, barring some kind of tech breakthrough.
So many other systems over the years have come up with clean, consistent mechanics that I'll categorize this as getting D&D up to speed.
HERO and GURPS were among the first to do so, back in the early '80's. White Wolf was close, but there were significant gaps moving across the various games...try playing a WW game with a Vampire, a Mage, a Werewolf and a Mummy, and you'll see what I mean.
MARKETING: This is where I have a little more experience. WOTC did make some substantial attempts to broaden it's marketing appeal, particulary by tying it's core game into the Star Wars franchise. It also tried to broaden it's appeal within computer gamer/fantasy fan culture through tie-ins with Robert Jordan's books,
TSR & GURPS were, AFAIK, among the first game companies to tie into established fiction lines...Conan, Lankhmar, Cthulhu. In TSR's current guise as WOTC, the company continues this practice. Its pretty old tactic, but effective.
Actually, there is another strategy at work that you've missed. For years, DC Comics and Marvel Comics trimmed down their competition by flooding the market with new products on a yearly basis...Pepsi and Coke do the same thing.
Simply put, deliver new (if not innovative) product on a schedule and on time. If you're spending your money on WOTC products, you're not buying someone else's.
My
perception is, but for actual campaign settings, WOTC has released a product for every gap that another publisher has percieved. So, for every
Book of the Righteous (Green Ronin), there is WOTC's
Book of Exalted Deeds; for every
Seafarer's Handbook (Fantasy Flight Games), there is a WOTC's
Stormwrack. Even FFE's
Book of All Spells now has a WOTC counterpart in the
Spell Compendium.
CREATIVE CONTENT: Innovation in creative content is like wheels on a car -- it's expected as opposed to prefered. Even so D&D has played it's creative content very conservatively to a very narrow interpretation of the wider game experience. Very conservative indeed.
Ok...they've supported their established campaign settings of Faerun and Dragonlance, and recast another as Rokugan. They've published Kalamar and Eberron, at least one of which could be considered innovative.
Greyhawk has dropped off the radar, as have Athas and Spelljammer. Each, in its turn, was innovative. Greyhawk was supplanted by Faerun as the default setting. It happens. But nothing has truly arisen to fill the shoes of the latter 2.
Ravenloft went to another publisher.
Maztica and others have also dissapeared. While I enjoyed the quasi-historical settings, they were really creative place-holders, innovative ONLY in the sense of covering settings that were very underrepresented in RPGs.
So, IMHO, WOTC's not been all that innovative- but they have displayed business acumen that is unusual in the field and being
just creative enough to keep the core audience happy.
One thing you have to remember about innovation is this...WOTC
absolutely has to be concerned about game balance- no 3rd party publisher has the same concern. Its much easier to pump out innovative product if you don't care that your race isn't really +0LA but +2, or that one of your core classes is overpowered vis a vis the PHB classes.
(Note, I'm not saying that WOTC's been 100% successful on maintaining game balance with each release, but they're doing better than most 3rd party publishers, IMHO.)
And Crothian's right...OGL was ground breaking.
