I agree they are two different things. It sounds like you are talking about illustrates the dichotomy of fundamental versus applied research. In articles and d

I agree they are two different things. It sounds like you are talking about illustrates the dichotomy of fundamental versus applied research. In articles and discussions I read and hear on research and funding, I see a general lack of acknowledgment that we have different research models. Different research models pose different incentives. To oversimplify and generalize a lot here, I'll describe my understanding of one model, The fundamental to applied research chain, Fundamental research is discovery, to evolve vague notions into concrete ideas and data. It is a broad, generally undirected investigation into some phenomena. Applied research, on the other hand, takes the concrete ideas and data (knowledge) gained from fundamental research and turn them into tangible products (physical such as medicine and virtual, such as search engines). With fundamental research, we get ideas, but not products. With applied research, we get products from ideas. Without fundamental research, there can be no applied research. Without applied research, we get no products. Yes, that is a broad generalization and disregards the true overlap of different research techniques, but I think breaking things out like this can help discover better models and financial motivations for research. To me, it seems that the public sector is more naturally suited toward fundamental research and the private sector is more naturally suited to applied research.