That is a good point. I am on the other side - excessively academic. One thing I've noticed is that understanding something does not equal having working knowledge of it (knowing how to implement it, etc.), a person with a theoretical background would often try to place a concept within a large framework and then make it owrk, an 'empiricist' or tinkerer would work the way from the bottom which would result in actual useful results. I sometimes ponder about this, and while I don't mean that one should invent the wheel, my conclusion is that In order to have an approach of knowing what would work in many different problems, a person with academic background would need to spend years delving into their discipline. The solution seems to have a combination of both approaches or as Nassim Taleb says, 'street+personal library'.