There's two if you look at it in terms of for profit and not for profit. These might be funded by government or through a variety of partners. The for-profits currently fall into a couple of different models. One is a corporate incubator. Their bottom line is more like a partnership or an alliance that will lead to a product that will serve the core needs of the company or support the company's product.
Startup companies are a lot more efficient per investment dollar per employee than big companies.
If they support IBM mainframes, they will probably miss opportunities for PCs. So one way to keep up with the pace of change is to look outside the company, to try to have a window on all this technology, and find the deals that are going to be most useful to them. So that's one kind of for-profit. The other just aims for a good return on equity, and in that sense, is more like a venture capital organization. Mostly, but it's spreading.