Figure out which problems there will be a demand to fix and fix them

Why wait for one person who happens to be the type of person who can raise awareness of in issue to raise it. Those problems that people did raise awareness of is just a small fraction of all possible problems that somebody could have raised awreness of and most of them will just sit there without anyone ever figuring out about that problem. There should exist some collaborative research group that tracks down those problems and fixes them. If that research group existed, research on how to make wisdom tooth extraction a smaller operation wouldn't have remained nonexistent waiting for one brillant person to happen to raise awareness of that issue.