Hell, the same can be true of postdocs. Or grad students. I know I've gotten at least one paper thanks to cheap computational resources for unfunded musings.
As for @danieltillett's comment, "What you need to do for tenure" does indeed promote some conservative and safe thinking, but:
1. Post-tenure you have a great deal more freedom.
2. I'm not convinced it's more conservative research generating than "We need to keep the VCs/Shareholders/etc." happy.
3. A big, splashy, innovative paper that makes it into Science/Nature/Cell/etc. is a high risk but high reward play.
selected based on how many nature/science (Cell/PNAS/PLOSBio) papers you have. You could have 5 papers in lower journals where you've invented a miracle drug and never get a faculty position.
Of the members of my committee, and the chair of my former department, there are all of zero publications in Science/Nature/Cell or PLOS Biology. While often a shorthand for what you need, it's hardly a generalizable statement. These are all very good researchers, tenured, with positions at R1 universities. And all of them in fields appropriate to this particular discussion.
