In Prof. Bob Sutton's HBS article "Innovation Factory", he says that the best innovators use old ideas as the raw materials for new ideas, a strategy called knowledge brokering. The system for sustaining innovation is the knowledge brokering cycle. It has four parts. The first is capturing good ideas from a wide variety of sources. The second is keeping those ideas alive by playing with them, discussing them, and using them. Imagining new uses for old ideas is the third part. The fourth is turning promising concepts into real services, products, processes, or business models. Companies can use all or part of the cycle. And let's not forget about the tradeoff between efficiency and creativity, or the encouragement of "weird ideas". (See Bob's book on that subject.) Bob contributes to Prof. David Kelley's IDEO in Palo Alto, which is a world-class product design firm that fosters and nurtures creativity and innovation through several methods - physical layout, culture, communication norms, on-boarding, decision-making, etc.
With these ideas in mind, make a trip around your own startup and answer the following questions: