Intelligent people solve their problems by understanding existing solutions to similar problems and selecting the most appropriate route. Gifted people work to fully understand existing solutions and elect to extend or replace them with well-considered alternatives. Geniuses traverse both paths: they leverage their comprehensive understanding of best practices and extend them clearly and harmoniously in a way that others can understand.
Everyone else approaches problems using a myriad of tactics, often telling themselves that their difference in strategy signifies their own greatness. Here's a hint: If you don't understand the best practices approach 1/3 as well as you understand your new and improved one, you're probably not a genius. And if you believe you're doing something that nobody else has done you probably haven't looked far or deep enough.
You can be a hero without ever innovating anything. By seeking commonality between the problems around you and the problems others have solved, you have a roadmap to making a difference. Conversely, you can do damage by placing importance on innovation at the expense of learning from others. You are limited to the power of only one mind, one pair of eyes and one pair of hands. Your legacy will probably be little more than a series of confused "WTF?!"'s
This issue hits close to home for me because I have spent time on both sides of the fence. Inheriting code from other "geniuses", nursing servers that have been taken out of commission by resource-hogging "innovations" - and creating more different-is-better strategies than I care to admit to. It has been humbling to learn that I'm not the smartest person in the universe - especially when the strongest evidence of that fact is when I'm trying to look smart.
Now, whenever I find myself doing something off the beaten path I try to ask myself whether this excursion is necessary or if I'm just becoming a victim of my own ego. If I can't clearly explain my approach in a way that makes others want to use and expand upon it, it is most certainly the latter. Innovations are worth applying only if they are helpful to others and if the combined mindshare can help it continue to evolve.
Solving a challenging problem in a new and better way sometimes means doing things differently. But no solution has ever been better strictly because it is different.