Transistors are an interesting case. AT&T was a government-supported monopoly, allowing it to pursue expensive blue-sky research. And since transistors were expensive, the government purchased 100% of the advanced transistors until they were viable on the market. http://tech.mit.edu/V128/N51/chomsky.html

The New York Times discusses how technology flows from federally-funded research to industry. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/02/technology/02darpa.html

I agree that national states are centralized institutions, but corporations are another type of hierarchical power structure with their own set of disadvantages.