Americans once eyed the latest Paris fashions in the hope of being chic; now fashion cool is more likely to be found on the frames of kids from LA and London. In corporate boardrooms, managers and entrepreneurs seek to adopt new ideas from competitors. Government programs aim to combat assorted social ills spread within and between nations. Musical idioms flow between jazz, dance music, and symphony halls. All this commotion about the new, the chic, the cool, and the best prompt some ideas to spread, some ideas to be reinvented through contact with other ideas, and some ideas to languish...