NEW FUND TRACKS DOWN IDEAS THAT ARE “OUT THERE”

Science is inherently conservative. Scientists with novel ideas typically can’t get research or development funding until they can show some evidence an idea is sound—and they can’t show an idea is sound until they have funding to chase it down.

That’s where Linked-In co-founder David Sanford comes in.

Sanford has recruited donors, including his Linked-In partner Reid Hoffman and Bill Gates, and set up the Hypothesis Fund, which will disburse $300,000 in seed funding over the next 12 months to ideas that conventional science finds too weird to pay attention to.

So if he can’t rely on conventional science for advice on which ideas to fund, how will he decide which notions he should back?

He won’t.

Instead, he’s recruited 17 mid-career scientists from various fields whom he sees as competent, innovative, and having a taste for the unusual in their areas of expertise. 

Each has carte blanche to give money to as many as three researchers he or she thinks has a unique idea that could turn out to matter.

The criteria: the idea has to be unusual, something that helps people deal effectively with risks, promotes diversity, and can be completed within 18 months. 

With the money already in the fund, Sanford expects to bankroll as many as 100 projects over the next 24 months.

TRENDPOST: The Hypothesis Fund isn’t the first to hunt down novel notions in science. One is being organized in the Netherlands and the U.S. National Institutes of Health has a little money set aside to test strange but attractive notions.

The pace at which science is accumulating new knowledge, and at which it’s changing, is blurring the line between what’s too strange to think about and something that might actually prove out.

More such funds will be created, by institutions as well as by billionaire entrepreneurs.