Ideally, researchers have even more than one of those traits (rare) and also a good base stat in the relevant one for the tech field (even more rare together, but that's what headhunting and recruting via character search is forInnovations: You get Innovations for each level in tech and for every Breakthough minor Event, which is triggered by on of the 4 traits (Scholar, Obssesive, Intelligent, Polymath) on a researcher.
This explains a run in my Heraclea Persica run recently. I'd killed a bunch of small countries and lucked out with a 14 charisma with polymath, intelligent, and obsessive. I did get a lot of innovations from that time. I didn't know it was mostly that one guy. Too bad he wasn't a scholar too eh?Ideally, researchers have even more than one of those traits (rare) and also a good base stat in the relevant one for the tech field (even more rare together, but that's what headhunting and recruting via character search is for)