There are a lot of things that would be profitable, that are held back by either belief that they can't be done or by failure of imagination on their ramifications. Or because people profit from the status quo remaining unchanged.
Non-scientific example: I just read The Box, a history of container shipping. It's remarkable how many transportation incumbents tried to put the kibosh on containerization because they believed it was either not practical or not profitable.
In the end containerization hurt many existing power structures, but it reinvented global commerce and opened unfathomable financial doors for the world as a whole, creating financial empires that were impossible before.
They would have to spend a LOT more to go bell labs. Until now they spend way too little to achieve anything. And for companies like Google have real managers for those groups instead of people only good at optimizing metrics.
