The essay puts the new in art and the notion of cultural innovation into relation with the apparatus of creativity of a western consumer culture and with an understanding of innovation that is at the economic-technological heart of our capitalist society. It examines the social figure of the creative individual and his or her position as a role model in the context of creative industries and creative cities. It raises the issue of expectations connected with this concerning forms of artistic education and pleads in favor of an academic space for mutual exchange that is alive and, in the best sense of the word, provocative. Included here, in the spirit of exchange, are examples of projects that present artistic methods of research from a broad range of current practice at the University of Applied Arts, practice that places itself in contexts of meaning quite different from those of the dominant economic rationale of utilization.