The Edison Project asserts that the media and entertainment industry is in the middle of its most radical period of change since Edison and his team invented the kinetoscope. Stemming from a multi-year collaborative applied research and executive education initiative at USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab, The Edison Project focuses on anticipating and creating ways to take advantage of new trends and disruptions in the media and entertainment industry.

We have entered into a world of what if and why not. In some sense, if you can imagine it, why can’t you do it? Through The Edison Project, the Lab posits a transition from an information economy to an imagination economy, creating a vision for a new M&E ecosystem and working with a range of strategic partners to accelerate its arrival.

Why Now?
What most people perceive as signposts of disaster we in fact interpret as signposts of opportunity. This shift from an information economy to an imagination economy may represent the beginning of a new global boom, with these four key characteristics:

1. The rise of ubiquitous and affordable technology
2. The rise of participatory culture and the new maker movement
3. The rise of a global broadband distribution platform,
4. The rise of a rapidly growing global middle class

These are all converging to reshape the media and entertainment industry—and quite possibly every other industry as well.

From Irving Wladawsky-Berger:
The Annenberg Innovation Lab’s Edison project takes an in-depth look at the powerful forces that are transforming the media industry, including new compelling technologies, a growing number of innovative creators, and disruptive business models. But in the end, the Edison Project is all about exploring some very important questions for media companies: are these the best of times, given the opportunity to develop and distribute all kinds of great content? Or are these the worst of times, as advances in technologies and new competitors continue to wreak havoc on business models? It’s against this backdrop that the Edison Project seeks to re-envision nearly every aspect of the media industries. And, as the lab’s Director Emeritus Jon Taplin succinctly points out: “What most perceive as signposts of disaster are really signposts of opportunity.”