[sevensor]

> I think the general summary of what you're pointing out is that in industry it's easy to do things that the company wants to do (make money, make your boss look good, make life easier for the execs), and hard to do things that you want to do (cool stuff, disseminate ideas, and explore).

Based on my experience, I agree with the first half of this sentence but I'd argue with the second bit. Sometimes the interests align. The one thing that has made my PhD worthwhile has been that it gives me the credibility to work on cool stuff that's going to make the company money. That's not to say that I would necessarily be working on exactly the same things if I had been free to choose, but that's largely because I'm solving problems I didn't know existed before I took this job!