Depends on the goal. If the goal is to maximize publications in good venues and have the occasional spectacular result, I think you are probably right. However

Depends on the goal. If the goal is to maximize publications in good venues and have the occasional spectacular result, I think you are probably right. However, if I grant that there is a lot of low-hanging fruit out there in the economy that can be attacked with already-existing approaches, then the Finnish approach makes sense to me. Having a bunch of people who understand statistics, basic machine learning algorithms, and have learned the discipline/soft skills to use them successfully (cross-validate, don't overfit, etc.) might result in a lot of interesting problems being solved.