“You press the button, we do the rest.”
That slogan could have come from Apple in 2015—but it’s from Kodak in 1888, the year its name was trademarked.1 For more than a century, Kodak was one of the most advanced technology companies in the world. In 1922 alone, Kodak produced 147,000 miles of motion picture film.2 In 1975, it built one of the first digital cameras.3 In 1976, it accounted for 90% of film and 85% of camera sales in America.4 In 1988, it employed 145,000 people.5 In 1997, the company was worth $30 billion.6 But by 2013, Kodak employed practically no one, was worth virtually nothing, and had been all but replaced by iPhones and apps from Instagram to Snapchat.
This radical dynamism is the defining feature of the nascent global digital age, placing the United States merely at the beginning of a long period of profound economic change. Thus, the political party that speaks honestly and persuasively about these new realities—and offers an agenda that harnesses these trends to benefit all Americans—will have the best shot at restoring shared prosperity and therefore winning political majorities.
Read Study