At least in my understanding, the reason why governments have in interest in this kind of model is that companies in return provide employment and pay taxes (if

At least in my understanding, the reason why governments have in interest in this kind of model is that companies in return provide employment and pay taxes (if you're lucky). In the EU, there is a really strong focus these days on exploitation of the results that come out of the research projects they fund (Horizon 2020) that you sometimes almost feel a bit out of place as a researcher. As in: why should a researcher at a university care deeply about how their findings can be turned into products by some companies? I mean, not only are they usually not really qualified for such questions, but also if they were interested in product development, they'd probably work in industry (perhaps even for a higher salary).