How to promote creativity and innovation
If the United States is losing its competitive edge in science and technology, as some indicators show (see Nature 453, 133-134; 8 May 2008), how can that trend be reversed? As well as various recent welcome recommendations to increase funding, graduate stipends, research facilities and teaching, May's Editorial in Nature Structural and Molecular Biology (15, 425; 2008) identifies the importance of more funding for high-risk, highly innovative projects. Although 40 European funding agencies have programmes that support such "novel" projects, the main funder in the United States is the National Institutes of Health. Its EUREKA program is for investigators "testing novel, unconventional hypotheses or are pursuing major methodological or technical challenges". Another initiative is the Grand Challenges Explorations, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. As the Nature Structural and Molecular Biology Editorial puts it: "If these programs in Europe and the United States lead to even a few discoveries like those of Archimedes—who, when he stepped into his bath and realized he could calculate the volume and density of an object by submerging it in water, leaped out of the tub and dashed outside without clothes on crying, "Eureka! I have found it!"—the monies will have been well spent."