Robin Hanson contemplates innovation:
Innovative things must be new, but new things need not be innovative. To be usefully innovative is to be better some how. Innovators try many new things, most of which are not better, but a few of which are. On average new things are worse, but those that are eventually retained are hopefully on average better. And with the right incentives, the retained better things are so much better that they pay for all the other new worse things.
The Dish 