Thanks for the thoughtful response! > the general skill of effective and succinct technical communication is beyond valuable across a wide swath of application

Thanks for the thoughtful response! > the general skill of effective and succinct technical communication is beyond valuable across a wide swath of applications you'll find in industry. I did not feel that academia rewarded succinct technical communication in any way, and the criteria for evaluating effectiveness were very different than in the private sector. The kind of cases you need to make to pitch to investors (or even product owners) are different than the kinds of cases you need to make to pitch to a grant committee. In both domains, there is a language you need to learn to communicate effectively, and I suppose that's partly what I was thinking of when I cryptically mentioned "writing to a template". But, the languages are not the same, and in fact you have to unlearn some ingrained concepts when you move from academic to private sector — or vice versa, I'm sure. At least I did. > ... but that's, in a sense, the same thing as the start-up hustle, is it not? Build the MVP, get that one extra client... No, I don't think it's the same. They both have incentive structures, but the incentives are different. It's good for private businesses to be judged on whether they make more money than what was invested in them, but it would be pretty catastrophic to our culture if academic research projects were.