Creativity is the origin of art. It has been studied and celebrated as the source of diffused well-being, urban quality, economic growth. Different from innovation, whose value lays in the ability to push the threshold of effectiveness ahead, creativity can be defined as the outcome of an intuition aimed at combining and fertilising two existing things in a not yet existing way. Despite the still persisting Romantic view of the creative artist as isolated (and misunderstood) genius, creativity arises, grows and eventually declines in specific periods when many unconventional visionaries converge in the same place. It emerges as the cooperative reaction to social troubles, cultural controversies, missing action. Its critical mass can be viewed as a creative district, where the competition is aimed at raising quality, the osmotic exchange between the local community and the cultural system is informal, and public action is finely tuned to the emerging urgencies. Creativity also emerges in overcoming the territorial structure of cultural production and diffusion, due to artists engaged in occupying neglected areas and craft cultural commons, committing to activate social interaction and unconventional practices of creation, production and diffusion of their artworks. Finally, some emerging phenomena related to digital technology and its impact to cultural supply and demand, as well as its threat to the present structure of the cultural system, can offer useful insights on the present orientation towards the eloquent consistency of the cultural value chain with the spirit of our time.