If you are like most people, you laugh at jokes at their very end, not the beginning. Why? Because jokes make sense only in hindsight after we hear the proverbial "punch line." We have no context to start laughing at the start of the joke. But once we hear the final line, our mind works its way backwards to make sense of it. We laugh.
So it is with innovation. An abstract concept remains abstract until our mind works backwards to make sense of it. Only then do we see the value. Edward de Bono describes this phenomena in his new book, Think! Before It's Too Late.