While I would agree there is a large amount of "crap work" involved in academic research I think it is a stretch to label it trivial. It is practically the opposite by definition.
No, it isn't. Most of the labor performed in the name of research is tedious, and the vast majority of published research results are trivial extensions to previous work.
It's like geology: everyone focuses on the earthquakes and the volcanoes, but 99% of everything we see on the surface of the earth was created through a gradual process of accumulation and decay. Research is the same -- on a day-to-day level, it's labor-intensive and tedious. Only from the thousand-foot view does it become sexy and revolutionary.
Well, I'm a full-time researcher (cs phd student) and I find it sexy. I'm not even rare, I feel the same spirit amongst most of my peers. It is certainly labor intensive and tedious, this does not mean that the work is trivial. In the context of this particular conversation, of all the problems that are being solved between startups and academia I hardly think that someone could label academic research trivial. If someone chooses to work on lame problems, thats mostly their fault, but there are plenty of interesting/difficult problems to be solved.
