One of my previous coworkers put it best: the cool looking proof of concept or prototype is 10% of the effort, and getting something that works in the real world and that people actually want is the other 100%.
If we see a real world application that a business actually uses, or that people want to use, that's great. But why announce the prototype with the lab demos? It's premature. Better to wait until you have a good real life working use case to brag about.
> But why announce the prototype with the lab demo
Because that's how you attract the media attention, talent, and financing you need to both go from prototype for product, and to have a market ready for the product when its ready.
Especially when other people are already publicly known to be working in the domain.
Lol, you need to drive up hype and convince investors you are not falling behind. Not even being cynical here, I think it's a good idea from a business perspective.
If we see a real world application that a business actually uses, or that people want to use, that's great. But why announce the prototype with the lab demos? It's premature. Better to wait until you have a good real life working use case to brag about.