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The aim of this article is to explore the role of creativity for high-performance innovative activity. It is our conjecture that this approach enables us to go beyond the dominant science-focus of the present discourse on the transformation to a knowledge-based society. In line with the first part of the Schumperterian definition of innovation: creative combination, the ability to be creative draws on dispersed - new and old, external and internal, scientific and non-scientific - knowledge sources. The article is primarily a theoretical and conceptual exercise: however, we relate our discussions to empirical findings from mature manufacturing industries. The discussions are also related to the current industrial transformation in the Iron Ore Belt in Sweden, and the possible challenges this entails for a region characterized by a strong tradition of large-firm domination and natural resource-based industry. In the current transformation, this region must find new ways to both encourage and support economic and technological development - something which may find its base not only in scientific skills in a narrow sense, but also in new attitudes to industrial creativity.