From an article on the Economist titled In praise of laziness:

Creative people's most important resource is their time—particularly big chunks of uninterrupted time—and their biggest enemies are those who try to nibble away at it with e-mails or meetings. Indeed, creative people may be at their most productive when, to the manager's untutored eye, they appear to be doing nothing.

I think both of these things are also true of technical research, which is a much more creative process than most realize. In failing to make this realization, researchers unnecessarily limit their ability to do great work. Very much related to this is the need to spend time with a problem on a regular basis. If a research problem is only visited on an irregular basis, then one can never get to the stage of daydreaming about it, and will never have those lightbulb-idea-in-the-shower moments.

From later in the article:

… the best managers focus their attention on establishing the right rules—recruiting the right people and establishing the right incentives—and then get out of the way.

I'm trying very hard to do this in my group, but am finding creating (or changing) a culture is hard. I want to walk into our lab and see people actively engaged in, or daydreaming about, their problem. We're not there yet.