There are plenty of innovative laptops if you don't mind spending some money. Most of the options you see at stores like Best Buy are cheap consumer devices--of course they're not going to be innovative!
Take an example--I have a Vaio Z-series (and I've had it for a while now). It's lighter than an MBA (yay for carbon fiber), has two SSDs in Raid 0 and up to 1080p on a 13" screen. It also has a good touchpad and a dock with an external graphics card connected via a light peak port. That part is admittedly wonky without drivers (that is, it doesn't work great on Linux or Windows 8), but it is really cool nonetheless. It also looks just great, and nothing like a mac. If that isn't innovative, I don't know what is. You just don't see it competing with the $600-$800 Windows laptops at Best Buy.
There are some other similarly innovative laptops like Thinkpads that you can get. Apple is not the only company with interesting notebooks!
Big business likes to replicate because it's safer than risk/innovation.