Sure, but there are many many useful tools for which there is no clear market. I do think academic institutions should do more to value and promote development

Sure, but there are many many useful tools for which there is no clear market. I do think academic institutions should do more to value and promote development of useful artifacts. But that's difficult to do if rankings (of people and of institutions) are only based on academic publications, which (for the most part) don't include tool descriptions.