Here's another take that I don't know if I believe, but is interesting. What if we aren't running out of new ideas, and it's just hard to classify all the new s

Here's another take that I don't know if I believe, but is interesting. What if we aren't running out of new ideas, and it's just hard to classify all the new stuff so we bucket it together too much? If 'fantasy' is a respectable genre to innovate within, then complaining that there's no innovation because we aren't seeing new genres misses the mark. But once upon a time, fantasy would all be categorized as Tolkien rip offs. Same with 'phone app' or 'super hero movie' as things that innovation can happen within. Maybe over time, old branches become commonly accepted enough that we can finally recognize innovation within them, but until then that innovation just looks derivative. And those branches have their own branches, repeating the process where most everything always looks incremental without hindsight.