Notions about innovation have been essentially been ignored during the debates about Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) project. This paper draws upon the work of two established theorists on innovation, Joseph A Schumpeter and Clayton Christensen (each from a different era and holding a differing perspective on innovation), to canvass issues about the possible forms of applications and services that might find places in a new communications environment, and might facilitate institutional changes with NBN in the next decade.