It always seemed to me like the academic-style sabbatical was a nice solution to this. Instead of trying to convince a bunch of people that what you're going to do is going to be worthwhile, you develop a culture where capable people are regularly given time to work on whatever they think is important.
Clojure's a nice example: it's been hugely successful, but I have a hard time imagining anyone raising two years' worth of salary up front to work on their idea for an idiosyncratic Lisp implementation. It looks like he had to fund that work himself; how much more innovation would you see if this kind of extended project was common?
An academic-style sabbatical would not work in the current software development ecosystem because, unlike tenured professors, top software developers cannot be trusted to stay with the same organization after the sabbatical. Universities can get away with this because a tenured professor has already contributed a lot of value to the university (a requirement for getting tenure) and can be trusted to return.
I don't see how this could be adapted short of formally contracting software developers for a period of multiple years and forcing the developer to pay a large amount of money should they break the contract early. I don't imagine many top developers would like the restrictions this imposed.
Clojure's a nice example: it's been hugely successful, but I have a hard time imagining anyone raising two years' worth of salary up front to work on their idea for an idiosyncratic Lisp implementation. It looks like he had to fund that work himself; how much more innovation would you see if this kind of extended project was common?