You want to succeed? First, fail. David Leonhardt interviews Tim Harford, author of Adapt: Why Success Always Starts With Failure. Money Harford quote:
I see two promising approaches. One is to earmark more government research grants for high-risk projects. A fascinating research paper compares conservative medical research grants from the National Institutes of Health with more speculative grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The Hughes approach produces more failures but many more “big hits.” Clearly, there’s a balance to be struck.
A second approach is the use of innovation prizes. These have received increasing attention but there’s potential to put up far larger prizes — multibillion-dollar affairs.
The Dish 