Scott Berkun on the realities of innovation. In a nutshell: stand on the shoulders of giants; do a lot of research into what others are trying; try, iterate and fail a lot.

Scott Berkun with a good primer on the pitch - "Coming up with good ideas is hard enough, but convincing others to do something with them is even harder. In many fields the task of bringing an idea to someone with the power to do something with it is called a pitch."