I used to think corporations were where things get invented. It seemed that way to me, looking at Microsoft and Netscape and Apple and SGI growing up. And that

I used to think corporations were where things get invented. It seemed that way to me, looking at Microsoft and Netscape and Apple and SGI growing up. And that in academia, people only made toys, and only got to the earliest stage of invention: ideas partly evaluated. But my experience in software companies has been that in a corporation you are a slave to convention. Because even if you innovate in your domain, that innovation will be invisible to the rest of the corporation. Because when they look at it, they will evaluate it by asking which conventions it follows. But inventions by definition don’t follow conventions. What people like is to see conventions followed, and the results of that. It reads as progress. Now I think it’s primarily artists who invent. But it’s hard to much production as a solo artist. So those who succeed are artists who split their time between doing their work in secret and public ally playing the game of performing conventions in a corporate body. If you split your time that way, you will be praised for applying convention and then periodically your secret art will appear as a magic trick and delight people who are already happy with you. Without the convention theater, the art will just strike them as confirmation that you’re out touch with the organization. The same is true in academia really. It’s just a different set of convention theater, around publishing rather than sales.