If there’s anything Americans love more than expensive outdoor recreation equipment, bacon, and wars of choice, it’s innovation. Imported from the Silicon Valley/venture capital sphere, the concept has pervaded every arena of human enterprise in this country and many others besides, from poetry to politics, education to agriculture.

If you want a literary grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, know that “innovative projects are strongly encouraged”; if you want one for design, make sure to employ “innovative forms of art-making”; and don’t even think about getting funded for your stage drama unless your work is at the leading edge of “groundbreaking, innovative theater.” (A 2011 issue of the NEA’s magazine, NEA Arts, asks the burning question, “What is Innovation?”)

President Obama spoke of innovation eleven times in his 2011 State of the Union speech. In Cambridge, Massachusetts, a city overrun with innovators of all stripes and home to its own “Innovation Center,” the local schools are now subject to an “Innovation Agenda.” Twenty-nine TED Talks bear the “innovation” tag, and a Google search for “Malcolm Gladwell” and “innovation” produces 2.37 million hits. A March 8 New York Times story was headlined, without apparent irony, “An Innovation in Luxury Watches Celebrates Long-Lost Function.”