# The boundaries between industry government and academia are fuzzy Usually the fuzziness comes from one group paying for research that another group is doing. Grad students and post docs work in government labs, like [[National Institute of Standards and Technology - NIST]] or the [[Naval Research Laboratory]]. Academic labs work on corporate grants - you can see this in everything from subcontracting on government projects to the origins of Genentech. [[Genentech was started by bringing together several pieces of existing research and subcontracting to university labs]] Government labs like [[National Institute of Standards and Technology - NIST]] work on corporate projects through grants the same way they work for the government. Corporate R&D works on Government grants all the time. In this whole structure, [[People giving out grants try to derisk them as much as possible]] so it is more likely that a more ‘established’ institution will get the grants. ### Related * [[It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it]] * [[§Academia and Research]] * [[§Corporate R+D Constraints]]