The World Economic Forum is perhaps best known for its annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together heads of state, CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies, and assorted other movers and shakers for a week of speeches, panels, and workshops in the Swiss Alps each January. But the Forum also works year-round through its network of over eighty global agenda councils, which address a diverse range of topics including biotechnology, climate change, energy security, and youth unemployment.
Since last year, I’ve been a member of the Forum’s global agenda council on the intellectual property system. We’ve taken a careful look at the forces shaping how people are creating and sharing digital media today, and perhaps even more importantly, what the world of digital media will look like in the coming years. We’ve distilled these down to a set of six digital content “megatrends” that, translated from policy-wonk language into English, are as follows