[patrickk]

How would this work in practice?

Maybe some form of corporate patronage, like Facebook and Stripe did in this story, and giving the inventor a generous slice of the returns from the invention (I can imagine several downsides to this too, of course):

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9003791

[JDiculous]

The problem is that investments in the future and public goods will always be unfunded in a free market capitalist economy due mainly to the free-rider problem. Fixing it would have to involve the government (or a government-like entity) subsidizing these projects. Of course care would have to be taken to make sure this money is properly allocated, the incentives are properly aligned, etc.