For innovation, which is more important, creation or curation?

Intuitively the answer is creation.

But even a noisy process can create variance to select over.

Curation is at least as important; because the spark will likely die out unless it's boosted.

Someone looks at the spark and says "this one has what it takes", to give it life beyond its initial gasp of energy.

So you clearly need both, but if you could only have one, the curator is the more important.