There's a little book (with big words) titled "Earth, Inc. " by Buckminster Fuller that addresses this a bit.

I would say if you start inventing as a child [0], the question reduces quite directly to "Why would you want to wait anyway?"

Think how many lifetimes go by where the real question goes completely unasked of the same exact inventors, "How long do we wait for attractive enough terms to bring the full 1% of the unutilized inventions to deployment?"

Answer that, and many other questions will be resolved.

[0] Like so many always have been doing for centuries, to where there will never be enough positions of eminence to accommodate them, and never was. But who vastly outnumber the credentialed, and especially the most eminent few, overwhelmingly.