Everyone is talking that innovation is the way to business success, but no one is talking about what to innovate and when to innovate. Actually innovation is the product of necessity and necessity itself is a product of desire to be the better; better in appearance, better in quality, better in service and better in cost-effectiveness. Every successful businessman know that there will be hardly any successful innovation if you are planning to innovate, but will be plenty if you sincerely want your dreams come true.
So how innovation starts? It starts from the realization that one or more of your business plans/processes are not delivering the result you want or from the thought that you can transform existing products/services/plans for better results or you can create a better product/service. You start to modify/create the plan with respect to your goals, your mind become dedicated, you starts to think merits and demerits of each plan/step, you want to magnify the advantages and minimize the disadvantages. And ultimately you will be innovating some thing, which is most suitable for your way of thinking and business.
So what determines success? It is determined by things like your desire to be successful, open-mindedness, knowledge, ability to realize what is good and what is bad, capacity to stop/change bad plans and practices, and politeness to admit you are wrong when you are wrong.