A category theory textbook opens the "motivation and use cases" section with the following poem:
There's a tiresome young man in Bayshore. / When his fiance cried 'I adore / the beautiful sea' / he replied 'I agree, / it's pretty, but what is it for?'
A single observation- thermostable proteases- was incorporated into modern laundry detergents, making Genentech and Corning billions of dollars in IP.