Major increases in value are not created by working harder or longer, but by working smarter.

Actually, value is created by workers working longer and harder, and combining their labor power cooperatively to create new things. It's not the work of one person alone, as there is no one person who is millions of times "smarter" than the thousands of people working for him/her, just as they are not working millions of times "harder." Moreover, a lot of new inventions we enjoy every day are heavily subsidized by the same government which many capitalists profess to hate, which means it's financed by the public, who never get so much as a dime off of it, either for their labor or collectively subsidy.

Cyrus McCormick may not have worked longer or harder than other farmers of his day, but his innovations resulted in millions of workers being able to move from harsh and minimally rewarding labor to easier and more rewarding labor, and allowed some of them to become innovators themselves who likewise increased value not by working harder but by working smarter.

And it was labor who mass produced and improved upon his prototype. No one does it alone, and no one person--or handful--is entitled to a vast amount of the societal wealth produced while the vast majority are left with but a tiny fraction combined. That is a parasitic system where a few live off the great majority. Looking past this fact to a comfortable narrative doesn't change the impoverished status of vast swaths of workers across the world in an era when an abundance can be produced by all.

Speaking for myself in my own profession, based upon a combination of my naturally given abilities and hard work, I produce a lot with my own smarts as part of my profession, but I cannot get it before the public without the work and inventions of many other smart people who are smart and inventive in ways that I'm not. We all work together collectively, and we should all therefore be receiving the full fruit of our collective labor.

If you want people to innovate, you need to reward innovators

And you do this by giving them the opportunity to better the lives of everyone, which reaches to themselves as well. You do not need to give them power and privilege over others, because the work of everyone builds upon and compliments the work of everyone else. Reward should be reciprocal, not parasitic.

- and innovators tend to be good people to reward, because they are more likely to fund other innovators, thereby accelerating the creation of value.

They fund other individuals so they can own everything others create, which is how business works. They accrue vast wealth by owning and purchasing the creative labor of others, not by building it entirely themselves. That's what you get in a system that requires money for everything, including any innovative work to get down, and it's all based on a selfish intention to own and acquire as much private power as you can. Take money and profit out of the equation, and the motivation for innovations shifts to benefit the collective welfare, since our welfare is all intertwined. Working with each other to create a better world for all creates a far more ethical and compassionate world order than a system requiring us to work against each other in a ruthless race to be "top dog."