&quot;Mostly I&#x27;m involved in mobile, wireless, and systems, and in all three of these subfields I see plenty of academic work that <i>tries to solve problems relevant to industry</i>, but often gets it badly wrong.&quot;<p>If you want to work on problems irrelevant to industry, go nuts.<p>If you want to work on problems relevant to the industry, it helps to double-check that your problems are relevant to the industry.<p>The desire to work on problems relevant to industry is coming from academia, not the author.