Counting the EMC years, VMWare has been public for more than half its existence. By your assessment, it's been stagnant since before most people even heard of it.

Remove the EMC years then...

I firmly believe that as any group of people gets larger, they get collectively slower and collectively stupider. Sure you can try to mitigate the rate at which it happens, but it always seems to happen.

but it makes sense. The innovation a company does is related to the average capability of the company (as it must, since its people who are innovating, and last i checked, innovation isn't some standard process like flipping burgers that can be replicated with anyone).

As the size of a company grows the average capability must tend towards the average of the population. I must say that can't be very high, and so you see the results here. Some companies have strict hiring standards, but i think eventually, pressure to hire more people end up costing them the quality.

Not sure if there is a solution, other than to keep the working unit tiny and independent.