I've seen this so much... It's quite disheartening when you are the actual expert or most-experienced person in terms of that "thing", but that's not how office politics works.
What's worse is that when the "unapproved" person wants to start some sort of new project or initiative, they get constant push back in the form of "it's risky" or "where will we find the funding". Seen it 3 times in my 2 decade career where the "approved" person then X-amount of time later suggests the same thing and magically it's a good idea and funding appears out of thin air.
You know how it went - they mentioned it to the right person on the golf course (or these days, at a cycling run).
Same here. A closely related phenomenon is something I called the Information Week effect.
Information Week used to be a paper magazine. Managers who made decisions about technology projects but who didn't really know anything about technology loved IW and read it on the crapper regularly. In my career I would routinely pitch ideas for new projects that would get no traction until 5 years later when the same idea showed up in IW. After that happened it was always easy to get funding. But by that time I was usually bored with the idea and on to the next thing.
Was the idea sold the same way? You obviously need to get buy in across the org, which in itself can be a daunting task and requires you to create various pitch decks, project plans etc.
What's worse is that when the "unapproved" person wants to start some sort of new project or initiative, they get constant push back in the form of "it's risky" or "where will we find the funding". Seen it 3 times in my 2 decade career where the "approved" person then X-amount of time later suggests the same thing and magically it's a good idea and funding appears out of thin air.
You know how it went - they mentioned it to the right person on the golf course (or these days, at a cycling run).