Steve Jobs famously said that Creativity is just connecting stuff.
Elon Musk has an interesting technique he uses call learning transfer.
This concept is the action of taking what you learn in one area and applying it to another area. This could mean applying something triangle-related you learned in trigonometry, for example, to a real-world problem like playing pool.
So for Elon Musk he has taken learnings from software and technology and is applying it to aerospace.
So in order to create or disrupt it’s wise to already look at what exists and think of unusual ways to connect or apply it differently.