Another from The Idea Factory:
Unfettered research, as Odlyzko termed it, was no longer a logical or necessary investment for a company. For one thing, it took far too long for an actual breakthrough to pay off as a commercial innovation — if it ever did. For another, the base of science was now so broad, thanks to work in academia as well as old industrial labs such as Bell Labs, that a company could profit merely by pursuing an incremental strategy rather than a game-changing discovery or invention.
In sum, it had become difficult, and perhaps unnecessary, for a company to capture the value of a big breakthrough. So why do it? To put it darkly, the future was a matter of short-term thinking rather than long-term. In business, progress would not be won through a stupendous leap or advance; it would be won through a continuous series of short sprints, all run within a narrow track.
In American and European industry, Odlyzko concluded, the prospects for a return to unfettered research in the near-future are slim. The trend is towards concentration on narrow market segments.
Andrew Odlyzko in 1995, on the death of commercially-funded basic research in the states.
This incremental approach is typified, I think, by Apple right now: every year a new and slightly improved iPhone.