You're describing a lot of tech companies like Google that had all these different orgs that were money sinks not related to a direct source of revenue and funded by dominance in search and high margins. And these programs didn't necessarily yield great creative products. Quite the opposite.
Whereas if you have some objective measure that's driving your decisions, like revenue or customer engagement (proxy for usefulness), you can drive great results.
I think either method can work if you have the right culture.
