"I look at my friends in academia and think: 'Wow, things moved so slowly there in the last 25 years!'"

http://theeuropean-magazine.com/729-wolfram-stephen/730-technology-and-human-nature

"I Like to Build Alien Artifacts"

by Stephen Wolfram — 02.07.2012

"I was an academic for a while, but I really like energetically doing projects. What I tried to do is build a very efficient mechanism to turn ideas into things. Right now, entrepreneurial companies seem to be the best way to do that. I look at my friends in academia and think: “Wow, things moved so slowly there in the last 25 years!” When we hire academics to work on WolframAlpha or Mathematica, the biggest shock for them is always how quick everything moves. We sit down, and an hour later we have decided what we are going to do and moved on. We can do crazy projects! If you want an immediate impact on the world, that’s what you need."