I disagree. Improving an existing concept and changing it to make it more practical or easier to produce for example is innovation.

The examples you gave in the introduction are examples of that: The parts that make an automobile existed when it was invented and you could argue again that it wasn’t a completely novel idea but an improvement of the steam engine and horse-drawn vehicles.

The airplane massively relied on improvements in engine and material design.

Your assessment that innovations used to be completely original in their design and are not any more is a fallacy.

I really like the 3rd and subsequent 4th panel. It would be worse with only three, imho.

I prefer if you refer to procrastination as “working in mysterious ways”. That’s what I’ll do from now on.

That’s a nice quote, thank you. I looked into it. It’s by Andrew Collier:

To look at people in capitalist society and conclude that human nature is egoism, is like looking at people in a factory where pollution is destroying their lungs and saying that it is human nature to cough.