Creating novel solutions have nothing to do with academic. Almost everyone encounters unexpected situations, that they have to think about to solve. It may not been novel as a whole, but for the person, it is.
It takes novel solutions to walk down the street, interact with folks, dodge random incoming obstacles, respond to comments, and a bazillion other things almost everyone does all the time.
I probably agree that most people aren't engaged very often and even when they are they suck at being awesome but that really isn't the bar being mentioned here.
> but that really isn't the bar being mentioned here.
Yes, the bar was "novel solutions WITHOUT priori knowledge"
So you've changed the definition. Please re-read what I disagree with and it's not just the novel part i.e. if I read it all from the Internet and copied it to be successful then that fails this definition.
If you go by that then a lot of people (no offense) aren't intelligent. This includes many vastly successful or rich people.
So I disagree. There's a lot of ways to be intelligent. Not just the research and scientific type.