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How to encourage big ideas December 9, 2009 by Peter Dizikes Enlarge Graphic: Christine Daniloff (PhysOrg.com) -- A new study suggests certain types of funding -- which provide more freedom and focus less on near-term results -- lead to more innovative and influential research. Scientists are much more likely to produce innovative research when using long-term grants that allow them exceptional freedom in the lab, according to a new study co-written by MIT economists. The work shows that biologists whose funding encourages them to take risks and tolerates initial research failures wind up producing about twice as many highly influential papers as some peers whose funding is dependent upon meeting closely defined, short-term research targets. “If you want people to branch out in new directions, then it’s important to provide for their long-term horizons, to give them time to experiment and potentially fail,” says Pierre Azoulay, an associate professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and an author of the study. “The researcher has to believe that short-term failure will not be punished.” The results are contained in a working paper released this fall, “Incentives and Creativity: Evidence from the Academic Life Sciences,” by Azoulay, Gustavo Manso, an assistant professor at Sloan, and Joshua Graff Zivin, an associate professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego.