My only major issue with Linode is their limitations of their stackscripts, and that they don't add and setup local IPs for their servers by default.
I would also like to see them use their Nodebalancers (Linode version of a loadbalancer) to expand across datacenters. It could be nice of them to provide an easier solution to load-balancing between regions so if I set up my app in each of their datacenters, and add a nodebalancer, they could help me lead the traffic to the closest source.
As for innovation they have added LongView recently https://www.linode.com/longview
I also wondering why they don't offer more services like AWS.
However, AWS recently increase EC2 pricing (almost 100%) for better hardware (http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/).