The article commented in this thread is one such example: neural networks were put to actual real-world use by western companies. Another example is the attempt of USSR to build something like the internet before the current one was thought out. They had the vision but the implementation somehow didn't take off.
Both the US and USSR knew about neural networks for decades before fast massively parallel hardware made them feasible long after the end of the USSR, so I'm not sure that's a useful comparison. The development of the internet was driven by the state out of national security concerns, not market forces and was not widely used during the USSRs life, so I'm not sure that one is helpful to illustrate the OPs point either.
