I feel your pain :-) Yes, many companies do run workshops on “innovation” without a plan for how to connect it to other initiatives that must be in place to drive long-term change. This turns many workshops into “lone islands” just like you say.
But then you ruin it by offering a straw man argument by saying that Design Thinking is not about cross-functional teams and that we need “Full Stack Design Thinking” to fix the “problem”!
Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Outcome Driven Innovation,… whatever principles, tools and methods that you choose to introduce to a client, must be managed holistically across the organization.
Unless you get top management support to put in place a proper change management program, all you’ll ever get is “innovation theatre”. It looks and feels great while you’re doing it but results in nothing of real value.
Suggesting as you do that we need something “new” that isn’t new at all and slapping a new title on it, isn’t very helpful.
