I should have explained a bit better what I meant by accountability in that context: reduced direct oversight from general management, almost kinda "chinese wal

I should have explained a bit better what I meant by accountability in that context: reduced direct oversight from general management, almost kinda "chinese wall" style. Besides the reasons given by OP, an issue w/ skunkworks is that it requires two things that happen much less often in practice than people like: you need very strong, skilled team, and the need for high impact that management believe cannot be achieved any other way. Similarly, at the heyday of xerox park, it sounds like Taylor was key to enable true, long term autonomy for his teams.