People who want to get rich take what they believe to be a path of least resistance in becoming rich.
Elon Musk did the opposite, he tackled the difficult problems no one wanted to think about. Which indicates his goal was to solve problems that were hard and create value, rather than becoming wealthy.
He probably just got bored with his wealth and wanted more.
The only innovative things I can think youre referring to are:
1. The one directional supply chain keeping everything in house (like Toyota have done).
2. His space explorative work, like every other billionaire who seems to think they're going to get access to profits from sending people to Mars (if you've seen how the antarctic has been split, we can assume something like that at least would happen to Mars).