As far as I know, ico is being launched to raise money for the development of a product or service, but I have not yet seen ico with a finished product and especially a worker. But I think that when choosing ico it is necessary to pay what exactly the product is going to be created by the team. As an example, I can bring a new ico EOT. EOT plans to create a new decentralized gaming platform where there will be no only players but also game developers and their vengeance service. The platform will also be on different systems: Etherium, EOS and others. I think that the very idea of creating a platform already costs a lot, so the game direction is now trendy. As for the finished product, then you just need to keep track of information about how the project is being developed and whether work is being done on create a product or service.
You're right, the vast majority are researching projects, but that is exactly the problem. Most of them get never completed. And if you look enough you find at least projects that developed some kind of prototype, an early version of the product.
Very rarely you come across ICO's with a working product, but these exist too. Just have a look at Metahash.