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I was briefly calling myself an independent researcher: somebody who self-funds spec R&D on their own ideas. In theory it’s something like indie-research : academic research :: blogging/self-publishing : traditional publishing. But the idea doesn’t really work.
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DARPA, DoE, and NIH styles are not as well suited for independent researchers because they typically focus on more ambitious things requiring teams and more infrastructure. They’re like pure enterprise-grade where NSF is at least partly consumer-grade.
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Dumb queation if I may: What about Bell Labs? The eras are different now, and the funding probably isn't there anymore but for the time it seemed like an incredibly productive model. Perhaps what they did might not be reproducible for reasons that you have alluded to.
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