If academia is 100% about status hierarchies this definitely wouldn’t work. It probably won’t work anyway but if there’s anything real in the function used to judge academic worth of work then there’s potential for it to work. There are multiple ways to improve that likelihood, more money most obviously of all. But new successful research institutes are founded so it’s clearly possible. Very unlikely unless there’s a very big budget, excellent taste in selection of applicants or both, but hardly impossible.