Investing for Discovery in Astronomy
  How should we invest our available resources to best sustain astronomy's
track record of discovery, established over the past few decades? Two strong
hints come from (1) our history of astronomical discoveries and (2) literature
citation patterns that reveal how discovery and development activities in
science are strong functions of team size. These argue that progress in
astronomy hinges on support for a diversity of research efforts in terms of
team size, research tools and platforms, and investment strategies that
encourage risk taking.
  These ideas also encourage us to examine the implications of the trend toward
"big team science" and "survey science" in astronomy over the past few decades,
and to reconsider the common assumption that progress in astronomy always means
"trading up" to bigger apertures and facilities. Instead, the considerations
above argue that we need a balanced set of investments in small- to large-scale
initiatives and team sizes both large and small. Large teams tend to develop
existing ideas, whereas small teams are more likely to fuel the future with
disruptive discoveries. While large facilities are the "value" investments that
are guaranteed to produce discoveries, smaller facilities are the "growth
stocks" that are likely to deliver the biggest science bang per buck, sometimes
with outsize returns. One way to foster the risk taking that fuels discovery is
to increase observing opportunity, i.e., create more observing nights and
facilitate the exploration of science-ready data.
