The words innovation and innovative first* appear in the 1981 State of the Union address. Since then (as of January 26, 2011) they have been used 52 times.
Innovation, 38
Innovative, 14
And every president has used at least one of the words during a State of the Union address, some more than others.
Obama, 22
Bush(II), 9
Clinton, 8
Carter, 8
Reagan, 4
Bush (I), 1
Historically, the Democrats use these words much more often than the Republicans.
Democrats, 73.1%
Republicans, 26.9%
I have no idea what this means. Maybe you do?
* I’m only concerned with the word use during my lifetime, so I didn’t really go too far back into history. When I reached the 1950 State of the Union address, I stopped looking. However, if you go to Speech Wars and search for either word, you’ll find that the word innovation is used 5 times between 1855 and 1904, disappears for a while, then returns in 1981. I haven’t actually looked at (searched) the transcripts to verify this. Oh yeah, if you’re looking for transcripts, I recommend checking out the American Presidency Project.