By schleps I assume you don't mean people, but tasks. Such as filling hundreds of test tubes or soldering as many connections as you can do, or writing code tha

By schleps I assume you don't mean people, but tasks. Such as filling hundreds of test tubes or soldering as many connections as you can do, or writing code that is necessarily huge but represents a small concept. Hustling is one of those tasks surely too. You have to be able to balance the selling and/or delivery in some way to keep the ball rolling. Not many scientists, especially researchers, are entrepreneurs but those that have lived by their own technology might just be the ones that have the abilities that would be good for investors. Still may not be very "brilliant" compared to working for an institution. Depends on the person. >most are terrible at making sales pitches. Oh, well. Given capital, a breakthrough entrepreneur can turn a used car salesman into a technical representative, there will always be a time or place when persuasiveness is critical. Looks like Musk could use a number of car dealers about now. It's supposed to be easier to find sales talent than accomplished scientists. Bell Labs I always thought was exactly what Bell needed, since they were living on their own technology. Has anybody here worked for 2Wire? I've got some interesting theories. I think it's no Bell Labs but I could be wrong. That could be another thread. >The real breakthroughs will require extremely slow, deep thinkers which have the autonomy and time to work on very hard problems without interruption in the form of sales pitches, VC meetings, demo days, and above all a constant scramble for funding. Two ways of doing this are to be really big or be really small. Janelia does look interesting but who owns the product of your research? Probably whoever builds the lab. I druther build my own lab. How many well-equipped non-institutional researchers are there any more anyway? I thought so. Odds are pretty slim. If you don't do it your dang self it just might not get done. But genius, the exceptional individual, "Great Man" or "Great Woman", is not just a theory, Einstein & Curie did appear. And true quantum leaps were made.