The person that read TAOCP would have strong understanding, both theory and practice, of implementing algorithms for all sorts of stuff. They'd also be on a team that likely had people with more hands-on or business skill. The combination would make for more effective solutions. As presty pointed out, Microsoft does a lot of work on applications that require solid algorithms. They also have a research division that does cutting edge stuff. See VerveOS and SLAM driver verification below for examples of what they did with various tech they developed.