LOL, no. It's hard to implement hardware functions in software if it's impossible to source the MCUs my software stack was built on.

What's really happening is that I (and likely many others) realised that Chinese-brand chips (which are not affected by the shortage) works just as fine as the western ones.

The other thing I realised was that non-authorized sellers works just as fine as well. Yep, I had to implement more thorough testing/QC, but I would not call that extra work innovation.