I'd say this is where more engineering approachable ideas come from or ideas that might be considered translational (or near translational). If you work near th

I'd say this is where more engineering approachable ideas come from or ideas that might be considered translational (or near translational). If you work near the bridge of theory and application, this is probably more the case. A lot of funding agencies are pressuring even theoretical or basic research to look at translational application anymore though (capitalism is all about immediate ROI) so I'd say this is increasingly shifting towards many research domains but in the past, there were a lot of pure theoretical areas you could work on where there are plenty of unexplored ideas you could build out and get paid to do the work. Application is certainly a great driver though because you have a demand signal to look at vs throwing darts at the board in work that may never manifest to anything solid.