It is notable that with the advancements of 24/7 coding agents with basic research capabilities the premise:

> a clever idea pursued by one person it was likely to arrive late and unconvincing because one person could not move fast enough and the baselines which one person could assemble just were not strong enough to really show that an idea was worth taking flight

may no longer be true. The limiting factors are: frontier model token and compute budgets, researcher skill, drive, foresight and imagination, not the ability to work in teams. Of course, working in teams still helps, and benefits from internal use, peer review and promotion of the research line are certainly there, but compared to some time prior to 2026, it's pretty much not a factor.