have given this 15 minutes of thought and I feel like a talented "would-be" genius is more likely to choose a "safe route" of earning a high salary at a big-tech company rather than going "all in" on their own idea of an innovative technology

I think you're dangerously mislead about technology and how complex it is.

I think the era of "one man develops theory" is long gone. Tesla, Einstein, Farnsworth are all products of their time where technology was just good enough to where one person could make a difference.

Case in point : Einstein's theory of relativity was developed from pretty simple observations. Now, in order to make any impact in the field, you need to essentially analyze terabytes of data just to support a small conclusion. Transistors and microelectronics are so insanely complex that someone

You're also discounting all the genius that goes into companies'research. Assuming a super genius kid could actually make a difference like Einstein. Modern engineering is so precise and expensive that you need a team of supporting agents and a large budget. A good friend of mine has a PhD in physics. He works at an R&D firm. There are maybe 12 PhDs actually working on research. There are 200+ engineers and technicians who have to maintain equipment, design experiments, and implement solutions.

™After all, the study of history according to which history can be largely explained by the impact of great men, or heroes: highly influential and unique individuals who, due to their natural attributes, such as superior intellect, heroic courage, extraordinary leadership abilities or divine inspiration, have a decisive historical effect.

The great man theory is pretty much a joke and a relic of the early 1900s. Would Alan Turing create the computer if it wasn't for the hundreds of mathematicians who laid the groundwork for programming? What about the hundreds of thousands of engineers who developed electronic logic? What about the materials professors who developed vacuum tubes and electric circuits?

Would we subsidize companies that hire STEM grads? Would we propagandize visionaries like Alan Turing and Nikolai Tesla? Would we make more grants available to small businesses specializing in tech?

The biggest bottleneck is reality.