> The only thing to do is to pay him for doing something else and give him enough leisure to do research for the love of it.
heh, am involved currently in exactly the process of
constructing such an environment. And we are doing exactly that: there is a high value deliverable that is relatively easy and predictable to achieve (but requires such specialised knowledge that it cannot be attained any other way than through very rare and highly skilled people), and then to attract actual good people, the people themselves are free to take the rest of their job / time and apply it to solving whatever they see as the most valuable contribution they can make on any time scale that is relevant.
On the one hand you can look at it as an embarrassing political fig-leaf, on the other, you can actually see it as optimal. I acutally don't think completely detaching people from obligations to reality often works out to be ultimately optimal anyway. You need something to calibrate what you are doing against.
heh, am involved currently in exactly the process of constructing such an environment. And we are doing exactly that: there is a high value deliverable that is relatively easy and predictable to achieve (but requires such specialised knowledge that it cannot be attained any other way than through very rare and highly skilled people), and then to attract actual good people, the people themselves are free to take the rest of their job / time and apply it to solving whatever they see as the most valuable contribution they can make on any time scale that is relevant.
On the one hand you can look at it as an embarrassing political fig-leaf, on the other, you can actually see it as optimal. I acutally don't think completely detaching people from obligations to reality often works out to be ultimately optimal anyway. You need something to calibrate what you are doing against.