From Chelsea Hardaway's great post: Dirty little secret

This is precisely the problem with most big companies -- they don't learn. They get paid to do something, and then they get successful at it. So they try to make it repeatable. They come up with all kinds of rules and processes to reinforce that one thing, and suddenly, there is no motivation to try anything different. There's no need to learn any new skills. And no time. The people inside are kept frenetically busy with meetings and memos, so they never realize life is passing them by.