This is the difference between Research(which Kay excelled at) and Development and Commercialization (which he didn’t). Both are important. The latter requires focus, discipline and deadlines.
Well, in a few of his presentations, he talks about the difference between invention, which is what PARC did, and innovation, which is what companies like Apple do.
He was a Xerox PARC guy back in the Smalltalk days, when they developed incredibly expensive systems that never really sold. In the 2000s, he was still griping about how everything was worse than PARC in the 1970s. I haven't paid much attention to him since then.
