eltonioni wrote:I suspect what happens is that 'people with money' (ie investors) get to like having it once they have lots of it and so they tend to lean into safe investments...
Also, during WW2 and until '80s, many innovative technologies which were eventually world-leading but which started small (often under WW2 or Cold War military requirements) started in UK governmental R&D centres. These were not only the military RDEs (eg RSRE, A&AEE, ..), but also, for instance, the GPO and NCB research centres. Some of these innovations were, of course, failures, sometimes expensive ones, and were publicly derided; but others were great successes, with their 'public sector' origins quietly forgotten by those who lauded them. But it was the fact that 'government had money' and Ministers and officials were prepared to spend some of it on 'experiments which might not work', which had got such projects 'off the ground' (sometimes literally). Oh, and none of the innovators in the public sector got rich off the ones which worked (the few individual
ex gratia payments were pretty small), but the Treasury sometimes did very well indeed out of the licensed IP.
Then, in '80s, there were the privatisations, outsourcings, cheap sale of the IP often to foreign investors ..
(mere guide at) Jet Age Museum, Gloucestershire Airport
http://www.jetagemuseum.org/TripAdvisor Excellence Award 2015
http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction ... gland.html