If Intel were smart (cough), they'd fund lots of skunkworks startups like this that could move quickly and freely, but then be "guided home" into intel once mature enough.
That creates a split between those who get to work on skunk works and those stuck on legacy. It’s very possible to end up with a google like situation where no-one wants to keep the lights on for old projects as doing so would be career suicide. There have been some attempts at other companies at requiring people to have a stake in multiple projects in different stages of the lifecycle but I’ve never seen a stable version of this, as individuals benefit from bending the rules.
Those are valid problems, however, they are not insurmountable.
There's plenty of people who would be fine doing unexciting dead end work if they were compensated well enough (pay, work-life balance, acknowledgement of value, etc).
This is ye olde Creative Destruction dilemma. There's too much inertia and politics internally to make these projects succeed in house. But if a startup was owned by the org and they mapped out a path of how to absorb it after it takes off they then reap the rewards rather than watch yet another competitor eat their lunch.
A spin-out to reacquire. I've seen a lot of outsourcing innovation via startups with much the same effects as skunk works. People at the main company become demoralized that the only way to get anything done is to leave the company, why solve a problem internally when you can do it externally for a whole more money and recognition. The causes brain drain to the point that the execs at the main company become suspicious of anyone who choses to remain long term. It even gets to the point that even after you're acquired it's better to leave and do it over again because the execs will forget you were acquired and start confusing you with their lifers.
The only way I've seen anyone deal with this issue successfully is with rather small companies which don't have nearly as much of the whole agency cost of management to deal with.
Or fund a lot of CPU startups that were tied back to Intel for manufacturing/foundry work. Sure, they could be funding their next big CPU competitor, but they'd still be able to capture the revenue from actually producing the chips.
