According to R.B.Cialdini and his colleagues, here's how the Fundamental Attribution Error plays out in everyday life:

If you've made a mistake, an error in judgment, or a bad decision, you should admit the mistake, immediately followed by an action plan demonstrating that you can take control of the situation and rectify it. Through these actions you'll ultimately put yourself in a position of greater influence by being perceived as not only capable, but also honest
...research suggests that if you play the blame game - pointing your finger at external factors rather than at yourself - both you and your organization will likely end up as the losers. p.123.

References:
1. Yes!: 50 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive (Hardcover), 2008.
2. Lee,F., Peterson,C., and Tiedens, L.A.(2004). mea culpa: Predicting stock prices from organizational attributions. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 15:108-16.

In attribution theory, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or overattribution effect) is the tendency for people to over-emphasize dispositional, or personality-based, explanations for behaviors observed in others while under-emphasizing situational explanations. In other words, people have an unjustified tendency to assume that a person's actions depend on what "kind" of person that person is rather than on the social and environmental forces that influence the person. Overattribution is less likely, perhaps even inverted, when people explain their own behavior; this discrepancy is called the actor-observer bias.

This is rampant in literature on invention and creativity. Attribution to personality is most often used to describe his/her work that had a major influence on the society.

From this perspective it is useful to describe invention as a personal event, while innovation as a social event. This way we can shift participants' attention from psychological to systematic effects.