In grad school I learned that the best time to propose a new idea is on Friday afternoon, because that’s when people are least likely to take the trouble to shoot it down.
That’s not all that laziness and new ideas have in common, though.
People who are always willing to be completely painstaking and careful (and that’s us, most of the time) don’t mind taking the extra trouble and effort to do things the Right Way.
People who are a little bit lazy are more likely to think of a new, labor-saving way to do it.
Of course, the lazy people probably won’t follow through and do the hard work of designing and building a device that will make their lives easier, but the initial idea of automation might very well have come from the mind of someone who was feeling lazy.