Finding the next "thing"

"Finding the next thing" can be considered as one of my main missions for the last few months. The next thing can be characterized as an innovation understanding of the ever changing surrounding, that once acquired, it can be leveraged to a business success. My path for finding the next thing is very chaotic and includes endless reading and surfing of the web in order to make the "wisdom" the opportunity to fall down on me.
In one of the innovation courses that I have made there was a method for inventing new ideas and products. The method says that you have to either add, substract or combine new dimension to an already made product, by doing so you have a new innovative idea that might be useful or not. A memorable sample was the "Arlekino" - a name that has been given to a Volkswagen Polo model that was painted with several different colors, one for the doors, one for the front, etc. The dimension here is the x,y locationing on the car's body. In a regular car every x,y coordination ends up with the same color, this is not the case in "Arlekino". Anyway, the Arlekino model was initially produced in a low volume; Amazingly, the public liked it and the model become a success.
Looking at the internet services that emerged lately, I can pinpoint the new trend of success services, which interestingly uses the same innovation method.
There is a new trend of aggregation/syndication services that combines already exist services into a new service that can be consumed differently. One example takes the known web site craiglist and combines it with googlemap, the result is a home/apartment rental and sale service that can show the location of the suggested property. There are more sites that are doing aggregation but I will not list them here - this is only one of the methods that emerged in current successful sites.
Another trend is the use of social networks in different methods. Social networks is a very interesting issue by itself, it is interesting however to build a business opportunity out of it. Currently there is a large number of sites that already used some kind of social networking capabilities, either by building communities of users, or building network of word combinations, a domain that already known as tagging or social bookmarking.
Many of the new Internet trends are listed one way or another under one or more articles that deals with the term Web 2.0. Looking at the social bookmarking term in Wikipedia will reveal some of the most known services today. The most popular services are del.icio.us and flickr, but there are many others and I don't want to concentrate on any of them here and now.
The reason for mentioning these services and the sources for information regarding them is the sole idea that when you deal with innovation ideas regularly, your brain and mind are focused and trained for innovation. So, If you want to innovate, talk about innovations, meet with innovative people, write about it in your blog (this is what I'm doing - right?), mess with it long enough in order to make it a habit.
So, from now on, I'll might mention issues that I heard about just in order to mess with innovation - beware.
Ha - one more thing, except for polishing the method of acquiring new ideas, I'm looking for a new one, so if you some to share or spare just let mw know.