WordPress is failing to innovate because it is trying to be everything. It won't make large changes because of fears of issues with backwards compatibility. It also tries to be a midrange tool between a blogging platform and a cms. Frankly, WordPress needs to almost take after Drupal and become a larger and more powerful CMS rather than a blogging platform.

For instance, WordP ress is missing out of 2FA as someone mentioned above.

WordPress has no built-in way to create a custom post type (outside of modifying the files and most people simply don't know how to do this). There should be a GUI and while some would say just use a plugin you can't fill in everything with a plugin. A plugin does add some nice feature, but the fact is they are simply not the best way to go about it. Drupal has a GUI for it why not WordPress.

The admin panel needs improvement or customization. While this can be done with plugins, again this is not the best way to go about it. I have also searched high and low to improve the load time of the administration board and I have found nothing. There needs to be a way to improve the load time because while WordPress works wonderfully with plugins they all hurt the load time of the administration board. I am hoping for some major changes to come to the board or at least offer some way to improve the load time of it.

The JSON API also needs to be improved. Comments can't be made/controlled by it which is a letdown. This makes it rather difficult to extend the capabilities of the platform.

I just think WordPress needs to focus on being a CMS the past few versions seem to have been more for Bloggers. It needs to stop focusing on backward compatibility (PHP 5.2 which is outdated).