Oh, and how about something else: if you want high-risk research, why not examine why we are producing so few high-risk researchers...

That brings us to the point I was going to make. Let's say you fund risky applications. What happens to the grad students and postdocs whose projects don't pan out? As Peter says, the disincentives to taking chancess over something more failure-soft go way beyond funding. They may not be bad postdoc projects, but I'd advise PhD students to avoid them like the plague.