...At the 2006(?) CES I happened to chat with a Hasbro VP on a shuttle bus, and he said they were pretty hands-off on WOTC because Hasbro management didn't have much domain knowledge in that area. ...
This is a core assumption that will continue to bite hasbro in the ass:
The tighter budget of 5e was a band aid to the core issues at WOTC.
In addition to the 4e debacle we can see other signs of WOTC's core issues:
Eventually Hasbro stopped handing WOTC board game projects not their own as WOTC kept mishandling them. They seem to be so-so with their own in-house games. But botched pretty much every acquisition and are notorious for letting copyrights and trademarks lapse. This on top of marketing screwups left and right.
...
The truth is that they really don't have "much domain knowledge" themselves.
Pre TSR acquisition, WOTC could not independently create an RPG that could even get the notice and following of a second tier brand at the time like Shadowrun.
They have only been successful as an RPG company since they bought the market leader. They literally imported all the talent that made 3.x a success.
And they handily displayed that when they let their in-house "homegrown" talent loose *cough, 4e, cough* that they really have no idea what their fanbase actually wants.
And that is before we start to account for the fact that they are Woke as fuck and starting to push their ideology through the D&D brand.
5e's success is not due to any great RPG design chops or direction. It is the most mechanically conservative D&D design of all the previous editions. It was a success because it was 1: Good enough for the actual D&D fan base. And 2: It hit just at the right time when playing D&D became a cultural fad again.
The WOkeTC insider "talent" pool talent has no special talent at all. The are not more skilled or insightful about designing rpg's than any number of independent OSR creators. In fact they have demonstrated that in many cases they possess less skill and talent than many an independent OSR creator has who actually has to sell product without the luxury of being the market leader to earn his pay.
I am willing to state that Hasbro could fire everyone involved with D&D at WOTC tomorrow.
Then consult a poll at TheRPGSite ranking the top 10 independent RPG/OSR creators.
Print it out, and begin to throw darts until 6 random people are selected from that list.
Put them in charge of D&D. Let them hire whomever else they need.
Then sit back and watch the quality of product improve. You would have a team of people with more actual creativity, real business acumen, and more actual "domain knowledge", than anyone else currently employed at WOTC.
But I seriously doubt that the "Great Un-Wokening" of D&D will happen anytime soon.