Do you have any prior knowledge of these teams? They weren't working against each other. One group focused on research and the other focused on products.
Not to be snarky but do you realize that what you have stated is the definition of working against each other? Research teams are about getting to the paper and a deeper understanding, product teams are about getting something out the door that helps you capture value whether you understand it or not. Engineering research teams are notorious for being both ungovernable and spending so much time "understanding" their ideas that they miss the market window. The canonical book on the subject for me was "Fumbling the Future" which talked about Xerox PARC, I worked in Sun Labs ("where good ideas go to die"), hired people out of Microsoft's BARC (Bay Area Research Center), and worked in IBM's Watson group which pulled a bunch of people out of research to "make a product out of AI".
It is a really hard problem to "commercialize" imagination or innovation. Two very different mindsets between "doing product" and "doing research." DOW Chemical did a pretty good job of it, but they have always been more "components of the solution" rather than the full solution.
It wasn't engineering research, it was pure computer science. They published papers, attended conferences, etc. The other team, whom I personally interacted with more were engaged in solution design. They would have a goal (e.g. alpha go) and architect a solution for that specific problem. The two teams were somewhat orthogonal from what I recall.
