Even if you are the smartest human on the planet but don't have the ability to communicate and persuade "corporate primitives" to give you funding, its very likely that chances of success fall down tremendously lower then less smarter individual with ability to twist the language and facts to his/her advantage, and believe me, in eyes of those corporate primitives, body language means alot more then you think as well. Unless of course you are one of the successful ones who have the backing or have streak of favorable circumstances with very understanding and intelligent people, that is good, but even then people are jealous.
The fact of the matter is that in order to get idea funded or developed, you need to be able to be aggressive in intellectual sense, and swirl away or answer with vigilance to every question/person that tries to compromise/discredit/intimidate your ideas or beliefs, and turn it around on them.
there goes entire 4 years of Political Science in 2 paragraphs (main idea only, no procedures), LOL.