I had read a Fast Company article that mentioned blinkx and it's approach to search. Are they the most up and coming search engine out there?

There's no #1 innovative engine.

They are all innovating to varying degrees in diffeernet technology areas, dictated by their long term stratergies for proving the best results, R and D they may have acquired with acquisitions, their existing approach to search, resources available etc etc.

E.g. Yahoo are working on local search with local search results and local match advertising from their subsidary Overture, whilst MSN work on their own search tecnology as a whole, Google place new technologies in Google labs - and at the same time startups focus on desktop search, RSS, news search...the list goes on.

Who is the most innovative? IMO any answers you get will be subjective.