Creative Industries from an Evolutionary Perspective: A Critical Literature Review

Although creative industries have been popular as a research topic among social scientists from various backgrounds, most studies lack an explicit evolutionary, history-informed perspective. In this paper, we critically explore whether the notions of evolutionary economic geography can contribute to analyzing and explaining the spatial dynamics of creative industries, which has not been done yet in a systematic way. Although not all evolutionary concepts are useful, we conclude that co-evolution in particular has important potential in helping to explain the spatial dynamics of creative industries in a comparative perspective.