This strikes me as a problem of acquiring recognition by peers in academia, not of making actually useful contributions/products in an inter-disciplinary field.

This strikes me as a problem of acquiring recognition by peers in academia, not of making actually useful contributions/products in an inter-disciplinary field. Someone mentioned Musk, but I think there's a sharply increasingly amount of lesser known Edisonian tinkerers and engineers turning out useful ideas and products for customers, they just aren't going to win the Nobel prize.