To truly innovate would be very interesting. I have thought about becoming a Nominet member again because I have an innovative idea, that I think will take the UK domain name (end user) industry by surprise. But it means it won't make a lot of profit for year 1. In fact, it won't break even until year 2. But, it's innovative, in my opinion. A lot of innovative ideas don't make money (read profit, not revenue), and that's why they probably never come to light. Either they don't make money for many years, or they're extremely difficult to pull off.
An example would be DomainEasy. Innovative because of the fee model, but if we had to look at the expenses vs the profit in year 1/2, I would imagine it wouldn't look pretty. But if you can last longer than that (financially), and continue to innovate along the way, then money will no longer be problematic.