There are a number of angles to this question, as I see it.

Innovation itself is a product of the imagination, but needs a basic intellectual level within society, and a certain level of technology in order to produce a result.

I'm sure that man imagined for many centuries that he would one day be able to "fly". But to achieve it required a foundation of a particular state of advancement of mechanical engineering, plus the availability of advanced materials and so on, before this imagination could become a reality.

So, first question: are we sufficiently educated, and plugged into the technological world, to be innovative? Answer: mostly yes.

Next, is the economic environment around us sufficiently advanced to underpin innovation and the activities that support innovation?

Obviously the macro answer is yes. We are a rich country. We have the basic resources at our disposal. But at the detail level, there is a fundamental unwillingness of the financial system to support new ideas. Banks are pathologically risk-averse, so they insist that you hand over your house before you get dollar one, which is a disincentive hurdle that many cannot overcome.

And government departments just want you to fill in lots of forms, then gleefully tell you all the reasons why it cannot be done. The one I had most trouble with, before I gave up asking, was "if this idea was feasible, someone else would already have done it." I still have the guy's name written down somewhere...

So, only partly "yes" on this one.

Thirdly, how are innovators viewed in the broader society? Is the culture such that people who have great, new and counter-intuitive ideas applauded? Or are they considered up-themselves freaks, and told to pull their head in?

I'm not even going to bother with that one, we all know the answer.