The purpose of Exploratory Actions is to facilitate the emergence of new research themes and to give scientists the resources they need to test original ideas. These trial runs can then be extended through the creation of an Inria project team.

Putting trust in scientists and their intuition
Exploratory actions provide an opportunity to put trust in the intuition of researchers. Through this scheme, Inria is able to focus resources on a number of subjects that are highly innovative, risky and potentially disruptive with regard to the institute's traditional approaches - in artificial intelligence, in e-health and in digital agriculture. It provides a way of delving deeper into individual subjects and proving their relevance from a scientific perspective: an essential step prior to launching the creation of a new project team. This might also involve exploring themes that are unusual for Inria or which are normally steered clear of, including subjects relating to social sciences or law.