The basic principle of both points above is that "problem finding" is the hardest thing in "real research", so a lot of things need to be done to help this ... (this is a very tough sell and even "explain" today -- almost everyone is brought up -- especially in schools -- to solve problems, rather than to actually find good ones) -- and virtually all funders today want to know what problems their fundees are going to solve - so they underfund (to the point of 0!) the finding processes ...
The ARPA/Parc process "funded people, not projects" -- and today this seems quite outre to most.
As you probably know, Jonathan is doing some work with us ...