Often you can find "new" things in your own kitchen by seeing them in a new way. Take a tour of your kitchen. Can that ingredient be sliced, diced, pureed, shaved, made into a mousse, used as a sauce? Fried, baked, roasted, poached, pickled, salted?
Cooking can offer endless ways to be creative. Use every means possible to expand your viewpoint and never stop looking for opportunities to learn new things. The ingredients don't have to be exotic or expensive. As mimi said, the most important factor is fresh and high quality, treated with great care and respect.
Have fun.
To me Matt, this is probably the wisest thing said from anyone in here - what it boils down to is learning, understanding the fundamentals, and having that base knowledge to not just understand 'What' works together, but most importantly, 'Why'.
Never focus on what's trendy - in the scheme of things, sure, it may bring in an extra customer or two, and maybe warrant an instagram picture from a few diners behind the times, but what are you really getting from it? If this is something you're passionate about, if this is a career that interests you and makes you happy, a trick and a trend is only going to set you behind.
As an example, take the whole encapsulation technique - take your alginate and calcium, and for a gel around a liquid. It was all the craze once El Bulli started doing it. It was neat for a little bit - but why do it? Once someone had seen it once, it wasn't a novelty anymore, and on top of that, hydrocolloids (the gelling and emulsifying agents) mask and dull flavors - and as a chef, why on earth would I want to mask flavor just to get a wow out of someone once, and have it be done? Everyone eventually grew out of this phase when they finally understood, if you want an amazing flavor of tomato and mozzarella, you serve great tomatoes and fantastic mozzarella, not a mozzarella gel containing tomato water. Tricks and trends come and go all the time, but learning and understanding why things work, is infinitely more important, and at the end of the day, you make a solid dish that's interesting, and you understand WHY it's a solid combination, you'll impress a chef far more.
This is my .02 cents - like everyone said, take a look at cookbooks, blogs, articles - anything you can get your hands on about subjects that interest you. Play around, make a few dishes, etc etc - but not to just copy - try recipes from a few chefs, see what works, and maybe what doesn't. See why X works so well with Y. Later on, sure, start to put more of a spin on things, make them more your own, but what makes tweaking and finding your own culinary voice easier is understanding why things work.
I guess to sum up my obnoxiously long answer, I just say this: Don't get caught up just yet in doing cutting edge, trendy, or crazy things. There will be time for that later. Like chefwriter said, focus on learning as much as you can, and respecting your ingredients and techniques. Don't get caught up on what's 'better' or 'more popular', that's silly as well. Just cook what interests you and you enjoy, and experiment without worrying what's right or wrong - As Ferran Adria said, "A very good sardine is always preferable to a not so good lobster".