Ask HN: What do innovative people focus on?
In life as well as on the product they built, that makes them great
Easily answered -- something that other people aren't focusing on. From time to time a vacuum appears -- an unmet need, for an idea or a device. Innovative people are able to detect the vacuum and picture what might fill it.
The other important issue is that an innovator only needs to be right once, even after being wrong many times on the way. Thomas Alva Edison succeeded in designing a light bulb, but only after thousands of failed experiments.
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -- Edison