As someone who has worked in both academia and industrial research labs, in both cases you can claim either academic publcation or real-world impact as a success wrt getting promoted …
a) I got a paper about this published in a top-ranking journal; vs,
b) look, those guys are now selling a product based on this thing I invented
(in an industrial research lab, “those guys” had better be the product division of your company; if you’re an academic funded by DARPA, “those guys” being anyone who is paying taxes to the US government is just great)
As someone who has worked in both academia and industrial research labs, in both cases you can claim either academic publcation or real-world impact as a success wrt getting promoted …
a) I got a paper about this published in a top-ranking journal; vs,
b) look, those guys are now selling a product based on this thing I invented
(in an industrial research lab, “those guys” had better be the product division of your company; if you’re an academic funded by DARPA, “those guys” being anyone who is paying taxes to the US government is just great)