There's been an increasing effort to shift "research money[]" from the public to the private sector. This is having enormous effects on the kind of research undertaken and indeed the way it is undertaken.

As a result, people who really understand innovation[+] theorise that the number of really important innovations is bound to decrease as ever more money is focused on (to quote from your quote) :

The other alternative is to specialise -- but that would mean innovators would simply be tweaking the latest edition of Windows rather than inventing the light bulb. The effect of their innovations would be marginal, a process of making what we already have work slightly better. This may make us think we're progressing, but it will be an illusion.

[] I say "research money" because the ways and forms this is occuring through are very diverse: Ranging from shifting out of directly paying for research towards "tax credits for industry," pressurising universities to commercialise their research at an every earlier stage and even fundamental shifts in the culture of large corporations like AT&T (c.f. Bell Labs.)

[+] Who really understands innovation? That's a topic for a complex diary, but as ever, I'd ask everyone to be suspicious of economists who invoke "innovation" as a black box that can neatly be incentivised by their usual means.