One thing to consider is that most of time, brilliant people make complex problems look simpler. which means their solution will look like the problem was simpler in the first place, and so there’s no merit in having a good solution.

That’s one thing that makes them really hard to recognize by non technical people. I would say that to recognize them and admire their work, you have to bang your head against the same problem as they do, and then see how they solve it. But just looking at their work from the outside will probably be very unimpressive.