Academics publish their research even when it contributes nothing to society. Private enterprises and government agencies aren't as aggressive in publishing eve

Academics publish their research even when it contributes nothing to society. Private enterprises and government agencies aren't as aggressive in publishing even when the publication of their research may benefit society more than many of the stuff coming out of academia. Some do for various reasons but sometimes they don't. That's why when companies go belly up and historians have their field day, we find out stuff such as Kodak discovering the benefits of digital photography since the 1960's and certain employees within different departments were pushing for Kodak to take the lead, yet Kodak executives didn't know what to make of it and where afraid of digital photography eating into their film business. We also learn stuff such as ATT developing video phones since the 1960's but they were too early and it never go anywhere until decades later when ATT was a lesser relevant player in the telecom industry. And the Post Office foresaw the coming trend of online bill pay and email eating into their mail volume since the early 90's, yet when their they had projects that would enable senders and receivers to received mail scanned to a USPS account or pay bank statements through a USPS account for those early bill pay adopters, Postal Management did nothing with it.