I once worked for a company where their R&D team just acted as a middleman between the company and research organizations like universities and national labs. I

I once worked for a company where their R&D team just acted as a middleman between the company and research organizations like universities and national labs. It worked well as the universities and national labs have funding for out-there stuff, but lack actual data and often a true understanding for how things work in industry. A lot of the companies in industry often don't have the resources (or priority) to do their own research, so sometimes both camps benefit. You could probably add like 10 more categories to this if you include actual traditional engineering companies (e.g. mechanical engineering). I do a lot of simulations myself with real models and haven't done any super theoretical journal work yet.