There are still a lot of companies that will let you work on your own internal projects as long as you can get your manager to sign off on it. The idea is that

There are still a lot of companies that will let you work on your own internal projects as long as you can get your manager to sign off on it. The idea is that if you can get a working prototype or some proof of concept working, you can try to convince a customer to sign on to fund actual production. Some companies have leadership that isn't focused on short-term profits and thus let the smart people they hire use their brains to come up with new things to build to make money on. Not everything is going to be a winner and maybe someone else will come along and make a better version before you can get yours sold but as long as any R&D project resources can be put towards another, the money and effort was not in vain.