That's a good point, upvoted, however in my one experience of a government funded R&D project many years ago I was involved in, a bunch of universities was aske

That's a good point, upvoted, however in my one experience of a government funded R&D project many years ago I was involved in, a bunch of universities was asked to produce a product. There was no proper oversight. We produced nothing of value (and I'd like a post-mortem of why, but never got one). That was UK £2 million wasted. I've no reason to suppose that company funded R&D is any better than govt. funded though.