Alan Kay talks about this when reminiscing of PARC. All of the cool stuff invented at Xerox PARC (PC, Computer Graphics, GUIs, Word Processors, OOP, proto-networking, laser printers) happened in ~5 years by about ~25 people. But those people were second generation researchers shepherded through the ARPA program, and ARPA had been investing in the effort for well over a decade when it finally paid off. Led by Licklider on the ARPA side and Bob Taylor on the PARC side.

Just the laser printer got back a 250x on all the money invested into PARC. And PARC had to push Xerox to even consider productizing that!