They won't have been the first people funding research to have thought of this... it's a criteria sometimes used in evaluating in NIH grants, for instance.
> Think of it as venture research
As opposed to?
I assume they're looking for a "billion dollar exit" from their research funding.
Moreover, many discoveries that went on to make a lot of people a lot of money had no obvious commercial application when they were first being researched... Predicting future markets is hard.
I mean "achieves their targets by reducing the total burden of disease on humanity", which is a different radical exit.
Could to elaborate?