SOE's to invest in innovation?

here.
Would the person who knows what the SOE's are supposed to do please stand up?
After being primed for sale ala Contact, they have been sitting around earning bucketloads of cash that are then funnelled back to the govt. I only know a little about the electricity SOE's and I'm not convinced they have many skills in innovating and spinning off little company's.
Mind you, it is interesting that none of these billion$ businesses have any sort of R&D division, so you could argue that this is a viable way for the govt to influence the market to start valuing knowledge and start investing in developing new products/expertise (i'm assuming overseas markets would be preferable and then you open a whole new can o' worms...)