They need a boundary between their research culture and their software culture. One org, two cultures.
The chaos you describe is actually a significant positive in research environments. It's not spreading oneself thin, it is diversifying and decorrelating ones' efforts. You can't centrally plan all innovation.
But for the interface between the customer and the research output, which is a software and product problem, that definitely needs a different approach.
Completely agree - the research output should be integrated into a customer facing product, instead they are trying to integrate customers into into research output.
The chaos you describe is actually a significant positive in research environments. It's not spreading oneself thin, it is diversifying and decorrelating ones' efforts. You can't centrally plan all innovation.
But for the interface between the customer and the research output, which is a software and product problem, that definitely needs a different approach.