ABSTRACT
The academic ideal, for many scholars, is to do research that is simultaneously theoretically elegant and solves important practical problems in the real world. In this chapter, I provide a case history of my own attempt to pursue this ideal. My work focused on the regulatory measurement and reward of service quality provided by regulated local telephone service companies operating in the state of Florida. I describe the challenges my research team faced in (a) maneuvering a relatively straightforward regulatory innovation into regulatory practice, and (b) disseminating the conceptual framework to another community (through publication in scholarly journals read and edited primarily by academics).
