"Innovate" is a word that can mean a lot of things, so the best answer depends on what you're trying to change. Still, the evidence from how innovation has actually happened points to a few patterns that hold up reasonably well.
1. Start with a specific problem, not a technology. Many successful innovations began with someone who had a precise frustration they could measure. Vague goals like "be innovative" tend to produce novelty without value.
2. Test cheaply and often. Build the smallest version that can fail. Companies that ship small experiments and learn from them usually outpace those that spend years perfecting a plan. The Lean Startup approach, popularized by Eric Ries in The Lean Startup (2011), is built on this idea.
3. Combine what already exists. Most new ideas are recombinations of existing parts. Looking across fields, borrowing a method from one industry and applying it to another, often yields more than starting from scratch.
4. Protect time for thinking that has no deadline. Research on creativity, including work by Teresa Amabile at Harvard Business School, suggests that people produce more novel ideas when they have autonomy and freedom from constant evaluation. The strength of that finding varies across studies, so treat it as a tendency rather than a law.
5. Listen to the people who will use it. Users often reveal problems their makers never noticed.
If you tell me the field you're working in, I can point to more specific examples and the sources behind them.
