Innovation frequently takes the form of lexical borrowings, involving terminology for new techniques, items and concepts. Since the Middle Ages, contact with foreign cultures has led to the importation of words, but borrowings such as guerra ‘war’ and albergo ‘hotel’ (from Germanic), or tazza ‘cup’ and albicocca ‘apricot’ (from Arabic) are no longer recognisable as foreign words because they were gradually adapted to the Italian pronunciation and morphology.
Recent loanwords, however, tend to undergo different processes of integration. Terms like sport and baby-sitter, as well as many technical words such as compact disc (or simply CD, pronounced as cidì), computer, file, mouse, scanner, password, e-mail (N.B. the last two words are feminine) have become part of the lexicon without altering the basic character of the Italian language, whereas other terms seem to trigger some major trends and processes. New ‘hybrid’ formations are now constantly created by simply integrating English words into the first conjugation of Italian verbs, as in the case of chattare, scannerizzare, forwardare, downloadare, googlare and implementare. In more subtle ways the English vocabulary transforms the Italian one by impinging on meanings, as in the case of the verb realizzare ‘create, produce’, but now also ‘understand’ calqued on ‘realize’, or the adjective intrigante ‘scheming, designing’, but now also equated with ‘intriguing’.
Today there is some concern over the invasive nature of English into the Italian language. According to puristic complaints, the media are responsible for polluting the language with their use of foreign words, the frequent use of which adds liveliness to the language, but also prevents speakers from the autonomous creation of new terminologies and gradually leads to the disappearance of Italian from some specialised domains.

A final curiosity: did you know that the sign @ is actually an Italianism? It seems it was used by the Venetian merchants in the XVI century as an abbreviation for amphora, meant as a standard measure of weight and capacity.