For sure you are right. And innovation can never be black or white. I guess I was thinking of basic research and innovation in technology rather than improvements and domestic governance. Agree with everything you said. And even basic research is not just strictly delineated among country borders. After all the best covid vaccine comes straight out of Germany. And there are certain research areas such as robotics where the US definitely lacks behind. But looking at the big picture I think most innovation is driven out of the US. Certainly not just by "natives" but to a huge degree by temporary residents or immigrants that perform research in the US.
Research in US had a golden age from 50s to late 70s. I cannot exactly say about research in physics or chemistry but Europe does have CERN which seems to be leading the world in particle physics. I've looked a lot of open source software (from which the likes of Google, Facebook, Amazon and others greatly benefit) and it's not dominated by Americans, even if Americans probably represent about 30-50% of the key people. Even among products and projects supposedly American, there are key developers based in Europe and Asia yet all the credit goes to America from what I've seen. This can be easily verified by looking at the devs on websites like GitHub.
Anecdotally I could mention Google Maps (originally developed in Denmark, purchased by Google) and VirtualBox (developed in Germany, purchased by Oracle).
Europeans need to brush up on salesmanship as that has been the key for American success stories. And like you said, it's not a black and white story whatsoever. But Europe is underappreciated while US seems to be overappreciated.

