Smart people generally get very educated, and higher education (in the US at least) teaches only critical thinking...They leave school thinking that the way to

Smart people generally get very educated, and higher education (in the US at least) teaches only critical thinking...They leave school thinking that the way to be useful and show your smarts is to point out why things won’t work, rather than using some of those smart to find a way forward. Grad school in engineering, computer science, (and I assume in math and science too) usually requires that you make something, so I don't think there is a sole emphasis on critical thinking. From the point of view of "making something users want", perhaps the missing part is reliable judgment of whether people want it, rather than depending on citation counts.