Blue skies research

Blue skies research (also called blue sky science) is scientific research in domains where "real-world" applications are not immediately apparent. It has been defined as "research without a clear goal" and "curiosity-driven science." It is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "basic research." Proponents of this mode of science argue that unanticipated scientific breakthroughs are sometimes more valuable than the outcomes of agenda-driven research, heralding advances in genetics and stem cell biology as examples of unforeseen benefits of research that was originally seen as purely theoretical in scope. Because of the inherently uncertain return on investment, blue-sky projects are politically and commercially unpopular and tend to lose funding to more reliably profitable or practical research.

Support for blue skies research has varied over time, ultimately becoming subject to the political process, in countries such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and India. Vannevar Bush's 1945 report, Science: The Endless Frontier, made the argument for the value of basic research in the postwar era, and was the basis for many appeals to the federal funding of basic research. The 1957 launch of Sputnik prompted the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research to sponsor blue skies research into the 1960s. By the 1970s, financial strains brought pressure on public expenditure on the sciences, first in the UK and the Netherlands, and by the 1990s in Germany and the United States.

In 1980, British Petroleum (known as BP after 2000) established a blue skies research initiative called the Venture Research Unit, headed by particle physicist Donald Braben. Braben controversially challenged peer review as the mechanism for establishing funding, emphasizing the selection of researchers whose proposals "could radically change the way we think about something important."

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