That actually is a good point. The thought crossed my mind while I wrote the above followed instantly with "well Bell labs, and to some extent IBM in the early days was different." I can't quite put my finger on why. Some sort of constrained, institutionalized invention in which a culture of talented but not "rockstar" inventors were allowed to simply sit around and try to impress each other (this was probably somewhat accidental), but at the same time were expected to be generating innovations and filing patents (this was the intentional part).
There was a fairly lively discussion (either here or on slashdot) a few years ago about whether or not Google with its 20% rule could be the next Bell Labs. Driverless cars and Goolge glasses are cool, but it wasn't quite the landslide of cool everyone was hoping back then.
It might just come down to the difference between "create a world changing technology for us, cost is no object" and "go work on whatever you think is cool, and don't worry about the bills".