Inventions and patents are much desired by researchers for career progression and more importantly needed by the society for advancement. In school groups, my observation shows that the seeming most brilliant person may not end up an inventor.
When you pursue a vision, you certainly get an invention. Someone said “Vision without action is a daydream; action without vision is a nightmare” Essentially, you have to sit down to think, develop the vision and begin to work at it; acquiring relevant knowledge and applying them to the task at hand.
Clearly, anyone who is excellent at what he does with the knowledge he has acquired, but doesn’t create anything new lacks imagination and perhaps is disconnected from the source of ideas for invention.
The man who wins a Nobel Prize in Chemistry or Physics is certainly not the first professor in his field of study, he may not even be the most hardworking, but somehow while working on a vision, more vistas open, new idea drops and something is invented or nature’s truth is unravelled.