Wiener has an entire chapter on this. Research is a gamble by its nature and will rarely ever appear to be a good investment to a bureaucrat or manager. As I recall, Wiener seemed to want to move away from this model towards funding individual researchers with good track records, for this reason and also because management often does not understand what's important. While I do want to provide value to industry, I don't expect them to fund my research because they seem to be allergic to math in my field.
You also seem to be confusing research with development. If someone is asking for a manor, that's not research in my view. If someone is asking for a structure with certain properties and it's not obvious what the answer is immediately, that's research. Research often returns unexpected answers even when done intellectually honestly.
> Every one of my former colleagues learned to sell their knowledge in terms of benefits a manager understand. It's easier for you to understand their language than for them to understand yours.
I try, but it's frustrating when most industry folks lose interest you once you mention basically any math. As you've said, it's a learned skill, which I'm still learning. There are no guarantees, unfortunately.
That may be perfectly right but I think we're both right only when taking it to an extreme. A purchaser might as well understand the technology very well. Just as a researcher could be a manager at some point.
The problem lies with "pure" researchers and bureaucrats. They will always see just their way so there's no middle ground. The perfect situation happens just by accident, where the researcher's curiosity happened to intersect with the bureaucrat's ideal money maker. And much of this is down to how each one communicates the expectation: the scientist doesn't know how to state his goal in terms of benefits that the bureaucrat can understand, and the bureaucrat doesn't know how to ask for things in therms that the scientist would understand.
But take the military for example. Their currency is power. And they are perfectly able to drive research in that direction even without being driven by scientists.
And yes, bureaucrats don't trust the researchers with their money. It's because a manager investing in research is like a bet with long odds, where you don't know what exactly you're betting on, and the bookie is a gambler himself. Scientists get guaranteed money without guaranteeing a result. And "worse", a success for the scientist doesn't really mean success for the manager. You are happy you have an interesting result, or a confirmation. The manager is happy if his investment was worth it in terms of time and money.
A more practical example would be if you paid someone to build you a manor and after years of work he comes with a hangar. Unless you're able to monetize on that it's a failure.
Every one of my former colleagues learned to sell their knowledge in terms of benefits a manager understand. It's easier for you to understand their language than for them to understand yours.