Actually, it is abundance and seemingly waste that produces a lot of innovation. Bell Labs was funded by AT&Ts telephone monopoly and was able to pay a bunch o

Actually, it is abundance and seemingly waste that produces a lot of innovation. Bell Labs was funded by AT&Ts telephone monopoly and was able to pay a bunch of really smart people to do projects that they found interesting. This resulted in innovations like the transistor, C, C++, and Unix among others. In some ways the push for productivity can actually kill innovation, since innovation requires times to think and the risk that all the effort may end up being wasted if it doesn't work out.