[rkangel]

I think you are going to want a mix of both.

The miniaturisation and cost reduction of electronics achieved as a result of continual investment by the phone industry is almost miraculous. A lot of innovation has happened to fit a supercomputer into your pocket.

The WWW example in a sibling comment is a great example of the contrasting sort. It benefits humanity as a whole, and would be very unlikely to be invented privately. We want more decentralised technology solutions - really standards rather than products - and government research have a different set of incentives that might make them better placed to deliver that sort of innovation.

That said, I work in telecomms. A large number of self interested telecomms companies have got together and agreed standard over the years (this is obviously not unique to telecomms), including making patents available (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminat...). The technology is not decentralised, but it is interoperable.