4 ms·

I'm a researcher in Biotech, and honestly, a working at curiosity driven research institute is all I've ever wanted from a career. I have the credentials and ha

I'm a researcher in Biotech, and honestly, a working at curiosity driven research institute is all I've ever wanted from a career. I have the credentials and have proven myself academically, and in industry, but this kind of position is just so hard to find! I really just need time and a small amount of resources to work on ideas. I usually struggle to get more than 20% of my time working on my own ideas. I've spoken with colleagues over the years, and when I bring up this desire, so many of them feel the same way. Many of these people are incredibly accomplished and come from top institutions. What a waste to not give that magnitude of creativity an outlet! The only path I see to this type of life now, is independent wealth. It just strikes me as such an opportunity to create a place for these people. If you build it they will come!

chii 5y ago
> It just strikes me as such an opportunity to create a place for these people the problem is finding and filtering the applicants that come to such a place. How do you tell the difference between somebody who just phones it in, from somebody who would actually produce some valid research breakthroughs? Unless you have unlimited resources to spend, this is a difficult problem to solve.
- dredmorbius 5y ago
  Very good question and a hard problem of itself. "Success leaves clues" affords some possible hope, though there's also a long history suggesting progress and individual attribution are limited and difficult to assess. There's a history of major research institutions, public and private, including those of Edison, GE, Dupont, AT&T Bell Labs, Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, Google and other companies, as well as the Manhattan Project, WWII signals and computing research (see especially Norbert Wiener's account), the space race and Apollo project, the Santa Fe Institute, and more. These should afford guidance. Often one clear trend is that results follow something of a sigmoid curve --- slow initially, a period of strong progress, followed by a decline. Much engineering trends toward an optimum, not some unlimited potential. Even Moore's Law likely ultimately follows this path.
- DrHedgehog 5y ago
  I think this is such an interesting question! Perhaps a new science of creative management. I guess there were a few places that presumably seemed to do this successfully (e.g. bell labs :)). There is probably a 51% problem somewhere in there, where the institution would need to make sure it isn't captured by those who would 'phone it in'. Maybe you could pay people a healthy sum to quit at any time. Managing a process which has no defined outcome, but whose local quality and direction can be measured seems like an interesting research path in itself. I think the institute would have to be bootstrapped and a lot of learning would have to take place to make a sustainable version of it. Also, as you say hiring would be challenging (though maybe no more challenging than hiring professors). However, I'll say that I can recognize at least one phenotype of researcher reliably who would thrive there.

chii 5y ago

> It just strikes me as such an opportunity to create a place for these people the problem is finding and filtering the applicants that come to such a place. How do you tell the difference between somebody who just phones it in, from somebody who would actually produce some valid research breakthroughs? Unless you have unlimited resources to spend, this is a difficult problem to solve.

dredmorbius 5y ago
Very good question and a hard problem of itself. "Success leaves clues" affords some possible hope, though there's also a long history suggesting progress and individual attribution are limited and difficult to assess. There's a history of major research institutions, public and private, including those of Edison, GE, Dupont, AT&T Bell Labs, Xerox, IBM, Microsoft, Google and other companies, as well as the Manhattan Project, WWII signals and computing research (see especially Norbert Wiener's account), the space race and Apollo project, the Santa Fe Institute, and more. These should afford guidance. Often one clear trend is that results follow something of a sigmoid curve --- slow initially, a period of strong progress, followed by a decline. Much engineering trends toward an optimum, not some unlimited potential. Even Moore's Law likely ultimately follows this path.
DrHedgehog 5y ago
I think this is such an interesting question! Perhaps a new science of creative management. I guess there were a few places that presumably seemed to do this successfully (e.g. bell labs :)). There is probably a 51% problem somewhere in there, where the institution would need to make sure it isn't captured by those who would 'phone it in'. Maybe you could pay people a healthy sum to quit at any time. Managing a process which has no defined outcome, but whose local quality and direction can be measured seems like an interesting research path in itself. I think the institute would have to be bootstrapped and a lot of learning would have to take place to make a sustainable version of it. Also, as you say hiring would be challenging (though maybe no more challenging than hiring professors). However, I'll say that I can recognize at least one phenotype of researcher reliably who would thrive there.