[jurassic]

Running a research group is a lot like running a small business from the professor's point of view. You have employees (grad students, lab managers) and equipment/supply/rent(overhead) costs that you use to produce a product (research, in the form of papers). You produce these products on a kind of account basis (not a per-paper basis), but if you aren't producing enough when it's time to re-up with your funding agency you lose that grant revenue. When the revenue situation gets bleak due to either mismanagement or the funding climate (sequester, anybody?), you can even "go out of business" and have to close your lab. Even though professors are paid by the university and not out of grants, it's doom for your tenure case if your lab goes into the red.

[yk]

At least in Germany you get the problem that the basic idea of research groups is rather feudal. ( That is the original idea when universities were invented in the late middle ages was, that professors get a personal fiefdom.) And this makes imho a lot more sense, at least for basic research. But recently universities try to organize it more like a business. That means that professors have to write more and more reports for funding agencies, and consequently have to pursue research that can be sold easily. That is, assuming that they have actually time to do research instead of fighting bureaucracy.

[LordHumungous]

Agreed, but having worked in both research labs and industry, they are very different animals despite the similarities.