[smokinn]

Although Google is usually the brand associated with self-driving cars, DARPA actually did most of the work. The self-driving car challenge went on for many many years with ever increasing goals until DARPA decided the tech works now and stopped the competition.

Google then hired the team that won the last several competitions and kept the ball rolling.

Seems to me like this is the only path towards true innovation since companies are great at exploiting existing tech and making incremental and efficiency improvements but are usually really bad at making great leaps forward. If you provide incentives divorced from the market for desirable goals the market can later pick up the successes and build on them.

[etrautmann]

DARPA funded the work that took place at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford and other academic institutions. Google directly hired the winning teams.