How to appeal to academia?

It is now clear that the appetite for research within my company is diminished. Funding is evaporating and the team membership is below critical mass. This makes it harder to build up again and does not bode well. When times get hard research is always the easy target as I guess it is the least likely to produce quick results. I've seen this coming for some time, in fact as soon as I started. So today I completed an application for an academic position. This is not the first one I have done and so far the statistics are not in my favour. I am hopeful the latest attempt will be treated with more of an open mind than previous ones. The thing about working in industry is that, well, its not academia. Hence there is no teaching of undergraduates, fewer publications  and less interaction with the academic system. So when it comes to assessing suitability to work in academia its easy to find someone whose experience is more familiar to academics. I would like to hope that eventually someone in academia will see the benefit that could arise from a different approach to the world, but I understand that competition for positions is very strong and there is no shortage of the young and talented  to choose from.
How then can I make what I have to offer stand out? Well in these times of restricted funding and a seemingly crazy elitist approach that seeks to cull off the little guys, it seems that an understanding of how industry thinks might be quite useful, especially when economic impact is king. That is my  feeble hope. Often though it comes down to publications and that is always going to be an issue. Journal publications are not a priority in industry. Their value is not obvious, quite the reverse, they eat into your profit. I have been denied the chance to publish work quite a few times on the grounds of lack of funds to support the writing. There have also been some things I am not allowed to publish. How can you make that work count for something with academic establishments?
I am a little more hopeful of this application than pevious ones, but I am not holding my breath.