None of these questions that persist year after year is easy to solve. It starts with an analysis of where you think the most important outcomes arise from. It's a self-evident, but wrong, conclusion to say that the way you get those kinds of outcomes, whether they are commercial advances, innovation, or whatever, is by directing research to that target.
If one looks historically at most of the things that have come to be recognized as having commercial, economic, or even social value, they've come out of basic research, where the researchers at the time they undertook the research had no idea. One of the most respected scientists I know in the country says that every time they fill out a grant application, they have to lie because it asks where the research is going to lead. They don't know where it's going to lead.
We addressed this briefly in our report. The discoveries of X-rays, nylon, Teflon, GPS technology, and so forth, all came out of basic research. It's not just giving the money to let scientists do whatever they want; rather, it's giving the money to granting councils so there's a rigorous peer review process. It should be a scientific and research community that makes the determination as to what looks valuable, not political officials, not bureaucratic officials, and not bureaucratic university officials. It should be the scientific community that makes those difficult judgments.