You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. - Nietzsche The paper explores the relationships among several notions:  the ‘creative economy’; New Growth Theory and the primacy of ideas; academic entrepreneurship; and the new paradigm of cultural production. Broadly conceptualised, the creative economy links the primacy of ideas in both arts and sciences in a more embedded and social framework of entrepreneurship which positions education as central, since its institutions are the primary knowledge institutions that provide the conditions for the transmission and development of new ideas. Entrepreneurship develops within networks that use new information and communication technologies. The role of the arts, humanities and social sciences becomes re-profiled as crucial in the generation of new ideas within the creative economy, moving discussion and analysis away from a single focus on STEM and the hard sciences such that the redesign of institutional/ academic environments is necessary in order to capitalize on ideas and move from creativity to systems of innovation.