That’s the point of pure research. R&D is both research and development and it generally aims to solve a problem. Research is done by universities more often while R&D is done by industry. That’s not to say that university research can’t look to solve a problem.

I am an R&D engineer and the number of companies that fund research that doesn’t solve a problem is very very few.

A foldable phone tried to solve the problem of allowing for a larger screen while fitting in a pocket. There was a problem to solve. Studying butterfly migration for the sake of understanding them better is research that doesn’t solve a problem directly.