There have certainly been a number of "characters" in Watchtower lore who share much responsibility for misery endured by the rank and file for the last 100 plus years. As much as Rutherford certainly seemed to be a megalomaniacal control freak, I would still put the majority of the blame on one Fred Franz.
I know it was Rutherford who wrote the book Children which told people not to get married in the early 1940s because the "Princes" would be soon ruling the earth but from that point on, was it not Freddie who published one piece of bullshit after another? His infamous tirades against education such as the 1968 publication saying you would never grow up to use it being one example. Of course, his biggest blunder is his very own oracle-hatched predictions about 1975. He was also responsible for the ridiculous restrictions against oral sex, saying that homosexual sex didn't provide grounds for divorce and giving elders the power to police marriages. The list goes on about what this wacko wrote and then published as the very words of God.
I don't know who cooked up this new overlapping generation crap. It certainly ranks up there as one of the most ridiculous things ever published by the Watchtower. I still don't think it will cause the overall damage that Fred's decades long rule did.