No time to comment, but:
The thesis my thesis adviser wouldn’t let me do in grad school was on how Americans were beginning to believe their myths; how we were deifying our great inventors instead of learning how they actually did it. Productive innovation is the result of learning all you can, parking the seat of your pants in a chair and mastering the intricate and subtle details, doing experiments, keeping records and constantly asking what step to take next to achieve the desired goal. It typically means developing a wide-ranging knowledge.
– Jumper