After reading the comments here, I see the problem: You judge past things by what they have become, and new things by what they are. Nothing will ever be “truly innovative” by those standards.

The automobile was for a long time just a more expensive carriage. The airplane was a pass time for the ultra rich, while anyone else got by with hot air balloons if they wanted to fly. The soviets got to space first by pointing a ballistic missile upwards.

We have CRISPR and can alter the Genes of any living organism to match our needs, but oh well, it’s only used by labs right now and anyone else got by perfectly fine by selective breeding, can’t call that innovative, can we?

Well, I disagree with the premise.

But perhaps one of the more obvious physical examples are Blue and White LEDs (1992). Small gadgets used to always have red LEDs, maybe green ones, or an unlit 7 segment display, everything else was too expensive or too energy consuming for battery powered devices. And not only that, RGB Diodes also saw the end of pretty much all cathode-ray tubes.

You see kids, back in the olden days before white LEDs, the only way to get blue light was to throw high energy electron ray on a phosphor coating. So anything blue or white before the 90s was made with that technology, from car radios to TV screens.

I’d personally also keep an eye out what the cheap electric motor will do next. From “hoverboards”, civilian drones, e-scooters and the modern e-bike, it’s only a matter of time before the new use case will emerge.

I personally designed and 3D printed a case to hold 4 rechargeable batteries, so I could charge them with 5 Volts from a USB cable, instead of buying a new charger.

Fun Fact: this ruins the batteries. Gave up on designing myself and downloaded a design for a battery-adapter (plastic shell + 1 screw that makes small battery fit in big devices). My stockpile of small batteries then lasted me 2 months before I finally bought a charger and new rechargeables.