Why risky research feels impossible on short-term contracts

A recent Science|Business article caught my eye this week, which found that fixed-term academic contracts discourage radical research.

Honestly, that didn’t surprise me at all.

If you’re on a short-term contract, the incentives are very clear: You want a project you can finish within the contract.
You want results you can point to.
You want work that reviewers and funders will quickly understand.

And that usually means choosing research that’s more doable than innovative.

The problem is that truly risky projects rarely tick those boxes.

They’re harder to pitch in short funding cycles.
They often get flagged by peer reviewers as “too speculative.”
They don’t come with guarantees, and guarantees are what you need, especially early on in your career.

What’s interesting is that funders are not unaware of this tension.

The European Research Council, for example, explicitly promotes “high-risk, high-gain” research (at least they state that). 
Foundations like the Volkswagen Foundation created dedicated schemes in the past such as Experiment! or Off the Beaten Track to encourage unconventional ideas (unfortunately, they were not continued).

Needless to say these programs are highly competitive and accessible only to a small group of researchers.

For most early-career researchers, the reality is still this:
Your bold ideas usually have to fit into generic grant schemes with short timelines and clear deliverables.

And that’s where the real dilemma sits.

Those bolder, riskier projects are often the ones that could elevate your academic career. But the system rewards caution, especially early on. So if you’ve played it safe because of contract pressure, that’s not a personal failure. It’s a rational response to an unstable system.

So the question is: “How can I stay creative without putting my career at risk?”

Here are three strategies I often suggest to clients:

• Keep a “bold-but-not-now” folder
Write down your riskier ideas so they don’t disappear, even if they’re not fundable right now.

• Build a project portfolio
Mix safer, output-oriented work with more speculative thinking, instead of betting everything on one project.

• Use co-authorship strategically
Sharing projects can also mean sharing risk, and creating space to experiment more safely.

To make this more concrete, I created a short worksheet that helps you do exactly this.

The Risk-Friendly Project Planning worksheet helps you
– map your current research projects
– make space for ideas you’ve put on hold
– and identify small, realistic ways to develop them without increasing career risk

You can download it here.

And I’d genuinely love to hear from you:
Have you changed your research choices because of contract pressure?
What did you decide not to pursue, at least for now?

If you feel like sharing, just hit reply. I read every message and reply to it.

Warmly,
Melanie

P.S. Our free workshop on perfectionism last week was a real success. You can still watch the recording in the EMERGE Café and participate in the related community challenge. See you inside!