Oddly, you said one thing that just didn't sit well with me. I re-read it several times trying to figure out why I was so uncomfortable with it:
Claude Shannon didn't have to satisfy any customers. He could spend years developing a theory, whose practical value was only clear after it was sufficiently developed.
This is exactly the opposite of my thinking. I've been in academia and in the trenches. I prefer the trenches.
Where I come from you don't have anything until you're able to satisfy customers. Building theories, tools, and new approaches is great, so great, in fact, that some of the best breakthroughs I've ever seen were because a customer demanded something people like us never imagined or thought possible.
I love satisfying customers with whatever I have in my back pocket. And lots of that stuff was developed by the giants whose shoulders I stand on. I always imagined that they were satisfying their own customers, but I guess quite a few of them were just doing "basic research".
You reminded us that there needs to be room for both the "trench warrior" and the "dreamer". When you're building a team, you need to decide who would be better for the role at hand and approach the recruiting accordingly.