The whole idea that a country like Finland could create and maintain talent without a domestic market is completely silly, if not entirely unsupported. Which is also true for much of the US. Arguably even the Soviet Union couldn't.
And if you actually had to choose between "top talent" and "mainstream appeal" the latter has orders of magnitude better returns. A larger part of the modern economy is built on that fact, including much of Silicon Valley.
If you could just invest in talent many countries would pass the US in no time. But unsurprisingly those investments mostly yield handshakes and cocktail parties.
I think Silicon Valley is quite a good refutation of your point, actually -- it was almost entirely founded on DARPA investing in talent. After all, they funded everything from the first ICs to Chomsky.
I don't think mainstream appeal is irrelevant. I just think that if you fund scientists and technologists to do the work they find interesting, they'll produce something more fundamentally interesting and generally useful than if you fund them to make great products. Great products, after all, include things like Minecraft, pet rocks, and fidget spinners.
And if you actually had to choose between "top talent" and "mainstream appeal" the latter has orders of magnitude better returns. A larger part of the modern economy is built on that fact, including much of Silicon Valley.
If you could just invest in talent many countries would pass the US in no time. But unsurprisingly those investments mostly yield handshakes and cocktail parties.