When younger I had the fortune to work at a research company (in a lowly technician position), and also to meet an academic physicist who had an improvemnt for optical telescopes.
At the company an idea or discovery was greeted with "so-and-so will want this, it'll put 'em two years ahead of the competition". Basic research arose out of the need for the clients to keep ahead in the market.
The academic, however, spent years getting his idea funded because of poitics- basically because funding would go to another department.
Speaking of lenses- off topic :) A few years ago, I remember reading about a scientist who had made a few atoms of transparent gold in the lab. Ive used "gold" lenses from time to time (lenses with a thin layer a few atoms thick of gold) and they have great optical properties. But for the life of me, I can find nothing regarding his research on the web. Familiar with that?