The rate at which climate action is currently achieved is often outpaced by the increasing speed of climate impacts in many urbanised regions globally. Actions related to coping with climate extremes, improving adaptive responses, and ultimately transforming cities for climate resilience have had variable success and have often failed to be implemented at scale. Climate stresses and impacts are accelerating; current climate action is not, at least not fast enough. Here we propose a novel conceptual framework based on the concept of ‘climate innovation’: the pervasive, strategic application of new and yet-to-be-born ideas, knowledge, and technology that can significantly accelerate the mitigation of climate change impacts and realise climate adaptation in human societies. We identify a typology of climate innovations—incremental, sustaining, radical, and disruptive—highlighting possible foci and examples of innovations. We further discuss how climate innovation and adoption curves, as well as innovation series, could be idealised and implemented to fast-track climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies at multiple scales. This framework can hopefully help societies and decision-makers to better contextualise how meaningful climate action can be envisioned, prioritised, and implemented—and discontinued when it fails to accelerate climate innovations and meet climate goals in increasingly accelerated timeframes.