[joezydeco]

Exactly right. There's a big difference between "go think up a way to figure your position on the globe to within 10 cm" and "here's a pile of cash and some beanbags, think up clever stuff and we'll commercialize anything that looks interesting."

The only thing that comes to mind is MS and their Kinect.

Um, didn't Primesense develop the imaging sensor used in the Kinect? This seems more of the Apple model of "let's figure out a cool use for this interesting device".

[cromwellian]

Actually, it was "go think up a way to deliver an ICBM between the US and Russia with meter accuracy" and "here's several hundred billion dollars to figure it out and build it."

The GPS system would never have been built by any startup, period. It took decades to build up the space based infrastructure and engineering know-how to make it, with the backing of a very deep pocketed government that was looking for results, not for profits.

We need diversity in research approaches. No one is saying that profit-focused R&D is wrong, just that monoculture is. If you've got $100 billion in the bank, do you need to focus all of it on short term projects, or can you try several strategies.