Creativity is a classical topic in innovation economics, including its spatial dimensions. The creative economy brings new ways of considering the role of innovation in firm competitiveness and regional development in a global world. Beyond technology, however, the creative, artistic, and semiotic touch constitutes an incentive to invent new services and products to satisfy consumers’ cultural and psychological needs. For more than ten years, researchers have studied the creative human capital, creative industries, and creative clusters. Politicians have considered the creative economy as a new paradigm for urban and regional economic development. The paper draws up a preliminary inventory of studies of the creative economy, mostly in English thus far. While it is not easy to perceive a coherent approach in this emerging research field, there are classical inputs from both economics and geography. The limits of the creative economy are identified, including the commercialization of cultural values, a new social elitism, and unequal development. JEL codes: 031, R11, Z11