I'd say that lack of references is more often a sign of ignorance than innovation. I see that every day; transformative work like John Nash's thesis only come along once in a while.
The way we publish research is broken. So much prior art goes unpublished because it is never accepted by a journal. Negative results, meh results, and flawed research all have value. Proper citation is often difficult but can be as important as the work itself, other wise the knowledge graph is fractured.
You're not in academia, are you? There're hundreds of obscure journals and conferences with very low standards. As long as you choose venues that are within your league, you can publish anything that remotely resembles research, and it will show up on Google Scholar. A new academic paper is published every 15 seconds, and most of them are "negative results, meh results, and flawed research".
Most of them are negative results, though usually not overtly presented as such. In my experience, it's extremely rare for a researcher to throw away months of hard work because the result is null. They almost always find a way to augment it or spin it, write up the paper with the phrase "more research is needed" in the conclusion, and submit to a mediocre venue.
