Sutton's law: that's where the money is. Even if it's not going to make you rich, someone has to pay for the research, and funders want to have funded big ideas

Sutton's law: that's where the money is. Even if it's not going to make you rich, someone has to pay for the research, and funders want to have funded big ideas. Your last question is about right as well. All the most successful academics I've met are incredibly creative people, with tons of ideas. If you have the choice of working on two equally interesting ideas, why not pick the one that's likely to turn out to be big? That will also help attract smart colleagues, which is, as much as anything else, one of the big perks of academia (not that you can't get that elsewhere for better salary and job security).