This is exactly what your grandparent (and parent to some extent) comments are arguing against.<p>There aren&#x27;t 2 different kinds of research, kind A that is never gonna go anywhere and kind B that is visionary. The vast majority of the advancement of knowledge has been what academia has always valued: probably never gonna go anywhere, but might push the envelope by an inch or a millimeter. The whole reason you have to <i>research</i> a thing is you don&#x27;t <i>know</i> whether it&#x27;s gonna go anywhere.<p>Which isn&#x27;t how we think in industry, not even in industry R&amp;D. We have to know it&#x27;ll probably to go <i>somewhere</i>, or at least have a small chance of going really far. That&#x27;s the only way to get a profit in expectation.<p>But work that will probably go nowhere or even if it does go somewhere, won&#x27;t get very far, like most of scientific progress? The point of systems like tenure is to foster that, since industry can&#x27;t.