[tachyonbeam]

That depends. I'm in academia. I'm surrounded by MSc and PhD students. Some of them are truly creative, but they are the minority. Most of them are happy to implement an idea that was assigned to them by a professor they're working with, or make small incremental extensions to existing research. In this line of work, what matters most is getting publications. I would say (this is my personal impression) that many successful academics are not creative types, they conservative and incremental, but most importantly, hard working, detail oriented and determined.

All that being said, I wish academia was more about really thinking out of the box, playing with ideas and trying things that are a little more "out there", but from what I've seen in the last decade, it isn't really the case, at least not in STEM.