I don't get this complaint? The leverage for R&D is vastly higher now than ever before: You leave Zuckerberg in his dorm room and you get Facebook. You leave Larry and Sergey in a garage and you get Google. You leave Steve Jobs and Jony Ives together and you get dozens of products in Apple.
The money in vs money out in research has never been more absurdly positive in human history.
This is why companies aren't investing in R&D, because they don't need to do as much as they used to, because a little goes a lot farther.
None of those are breakthrough discoveries, hell most of those arguably weren't even the first to market. MySpace existed before Facebook, Search Engines existed before Google, Phones in Japan were just as advanced as the first iPhone.
I suspect the confusion here is that too much market-centered thinking, while essential for doing good business, can lead you to lose sight of "use value" in the big picture.
If Google search and Facebook were to disappear tomorrow, my life would barely change at all (it might even improve). Contrast Google and Facebook with: packet-switched networks, the internet, cellular and wireless networks, sattelites, DNS. These things disappear and your life changes dramatically.
So in terms of market, yes, you can get some good ROI for research, but you're not getting flying cars (or various other technologies with such intrinsic potential to be life-changing) without a LOT of effort.
The money in vs money out in research has never been more absurdly positive in human history.
This is why companies aren't investing in R&D, because they don't need to do as much as they used to, because a little goes a lot farther.