Some organisations fund internal research so that they can demonstrate innovation to customers / investors, etc during marketing / sales, e.g. to differentiate

Some organisations fund internal research so that they can demonstrate innovation to customers / investors, etc during marketing / sales, e.g. to differentiate themselves from competitors. If some of the ideas are in fact workable / profitable that is a bonus. My first job in industry outside academia was as a programmer in the 'Advanced Techniques Department' (a.k.a. Toy Shop) of a traditional UK engineering company. We were quite often incorporated into the agenda of senior VIP visits, and we were instructed to focus on the innovative aspects of what we did. I realised later that the demos were actually great training for me as well, giving me insights into communicating with non-technical executives. I also got to work with European partner research groups in industry (spells in Denmark and Germany), which was also excellent experience. Incidentally, the ATD had much better tooling for AI research (Lisp and a small fleet of Lisp machines) than I'd used for research at Uni (C / Unix). I was also introduced to proper software engineering discipline. My productivity (in terms of demo'd systems / capabilities) was much higher than it had been as a postgrad, which I quickly came to realise had been undisciplined hacking. [edit - refined the argument a bit]