I think you have to have a separate entity(ies) that is strictly eggheads trying new shit. They need a big budget and have to keep the bean counters away, otherwise they will steal all the soul out of the enterprise. That's why so many thing come out of places like universities and NASA, you don't have bean counters killing the soul of the engineers/scientists. I'm not saying that situation is always possible, just putting out a theory. Also a lot of the low hanging fruit in science and math has already been discovered/invented, so it gets harder. This is where I hope AGI comes in, even if it's risky.