[moandcompany]

I'd argue that a concise explanation for these organizations having keen abilities to make great impact with their research is related to their participation in the golden age of "operations research" ... they had a plethora of real problems to solve, some of these being in a wartime environment, and collections of bright and capable engineers/scientists/mathemeticians/physicists/etc that were motivated to solve those problems.

They were also allowed to explore areas where they reasonably believed value might exist without being forced to ship quarterly or being forced to pursue and sell their pursuit of what would be sexy to investors