I don't know what your current industry is, but Google publishes their research and collaborates with academic institutions is one that immediately comes to mind. The government (NASA, NSA for one), tech companies (IBM, Microsoft, etc.), medical companies, aerospace/defense (JPL), just to name a few. I am sure there are way more than I could think of and I am sure others will care to fill in as well.
Just to complement your post, Richard Feynman's quote on the topic:
“I was an ordinary person who studied hard. There are no miracle people. It happens they get interested in this thing and they learn all this stuff, but they’re just people.”
I dunno man but I always believed Feynman was expressing a very “aw shucks” everyman type of sensibility to motivate his students but really he’s a genius who just never saw himself on par with the other genius demigod scientists of his time but still far removed from common people like me for example. Or he knew he was exceptional but he just liked to distinguish himself from the more square academic types by appealing to the regular people.
Either way, I never bought his claim that he was not exceptional.
Same lol. By the OP's logic, every student pursuing this field in a university as an undergrad/graduate student should be taking an IQ test before proceeding to the upper level math courses covering these topics. Anything less than the threshold will mean they have to focus on something different.
Who's to say that you can't go into industry and not be a researcher? You don't have to stay in academia to do research. Many companies and industries tend to publish papers and some even work with universities for research.
I would generalize it to seeing trash in your daily walk. Not saying to to grab every piece of garbage, but even just one piece of trash tossed/recycled appropriately would make a difference.
I am kind of curious to know how many people know and utilize git worktrees since it is fairly new (introduced in git v.2.28). I find it to be quite practical and your approach to git worktrees makes sense.
I've shared it at work before but I think you need to see something 5-10 times, then be motivated to try it, and then it really sinks in.
One neat feature I've also shown people is using worktrees to have many sparse checkouts from a big repo/monorepo so they can be used as more sane chunks.
Research is not exclusive to academia.