It’s not just in academia. Lots of technology breakthroughs come from “skunk works”—unauthorized research and experimentation.
Even then, the breakthroughs are likely to be ignored or suppressed by the corporation. Xerox invented the mouse and the graphic user interface, but it lay dormant in the labs for years until Steve Jobs took a walkthrough of the lab and saw it.
And Ethernet, which became computer networking. Robert Metcalfe, of the Xerox PARC Laboratory.
And the first object-oriented computer language, by Alan Kay, Dan Ingalls and Adele Goldberg, also of Xerox PARC.
Xerox was run by ex-Ford Motor Company executives. They were focused on making copiers. None of the above inventions, which played a large role in ushering in the internet age, were seen as helping Xerox sell more copiers.
Even as photocopying technology became a commodity, taken for granted and practically ignored, eventually being almost completely superseded by the computer desktop, computer graphics, and file sharing.