Seems to me like many research institutions, but well funded, attracting great talent and able to operate for a long timescale - they asked a lot of wrong questions too and we just highlight the great ones.
It is more like "Don't burden talented people with 15 hours of mindless grant-related bureaucracy per week". Current models of science funding sap precious time away from the researchers in the name of red tape.
The brains are the most precious resource, not the money, and they should not be bothered with trivialities.
The institute of advanced study follows this philosophy. The results are mixed. Putting people away with no urgency or engagement with real world problems hasn’t done that well.
The Bell system was rapidly growing and expanding across the world. This gave it capital to spend but it also gave it incredible access across our entire society to government, universities, and business.
It allows more people to do it as a career if the funding goes partially towards salaries. That goes a long way towards making more progress in more fields.
I'm starting to come to the idea that the rate of progress is more driven by the rate of adoption than by number of researchers.
It takes a whole lot of implementation and organisation to make any innovation tangible, so in some ways a bigger overall society slows things down as much as you gain from the total number of researchers.
Competition from foreign societies is also a part of this.
I'd say that's true after a certain point in any specific field. But there are so many fields that do show some future promise with only a few people doing research at any one time. I think a bit more breath of search will do us well
Certainly, as does any open-ended research organization. But when there are innumerable questions to consider and maybe 1% are worth-while, a 25% success rate might be incredibly impressive.