Should everyone in a society be innovative?

Here’s a comment posted by Kate Davis in response to my post from last week:

This almost makes me wonder if we want all people to be innovative? I know that being innovative is a goal and a highly valued quality, but you as you said, the copy-cat aspect of human nature is required for our continued survival. I suppose the question truly is "Should everyone in a society be innovative?" Yes, being a stick-in-the mud is probably not good if the society wants to be dynamic, a definite plus for the society’s probability for surviving.
I will have to think on this more, but as with every observation I see, I think the "why" is almost always more important than the "what."

 

Here’s my response and I welcome your thoughts:

Yes it’s an interesting question but I would frame it another way: Do we want everyone in society to fulfill their potential? If the answer is yes, then being innovative becomes a desirable quality because that’s ‘what’ innovation really is. If you have the desire to become better consistently all the time you stand a better chance of innovating because you’re a lot more open to new things, new experiences, new ideas and have a higher tolerance for failure.

What do you think?