Hell, the same can be true of postdocs. Or grad students. I know I've gotten at least one paper thanks to cheap computational resources for unfunded musings. A

Hell, the same can be true of postdocs. Or grad students. I know I've gotten at least one paper thanks to cheap computational resources for unfunded musings. As for @danieltillett's comment, "What you need to do for tenure" does indeed promote some conservative and safe thinking, but: 1. Post-tenure you have a great deal more freedom. 2. I'm not convinced it's more conservative research generating than "We need to keep the VCs/Shareholders/etc." happy. 3. A big, splashy, innovative paper that makes it into Science/Nature/Cell/etc. is a high risk but high reward play.