I have a question for you as well: What satisfies you? What fulfills you? Are you driven by the pleasure of providing for your family, of serving as an example, etc.? I'm very interested to learn what motivates you if not the rat-race.

Innovators innovate. It's what they do.

Yes, the romantic rogue genius, the world-changing entrepreneur - these people will always innovate, no matter who tries to stop them. When people - that is to say, IP-dependent businesses - talk about "hindering innovation", they're saying that they'll invest less. As many people here point out, being a "scientist" is now a career path for most people instead of a "calling". To these businesses, less innovation means hiring fewer sound technicians, pharmacologists, graphic artists. Whether you agree that hiring more workers to solve a problem assembly-line style is actually innovation, or that "innovation" can be attributable to an entire company, is another issue entirely :)