The phrase imagination economy is not new, and nothing here claims to have coined it.
The earliest use found in print is Geoffrey Colvin's July 2006 essay of that title in Fortune, gathering arguments then being made by Daniel Pink, Richard Florida and Virginia Postrel: that “the very basis of value creation is shifting from the disciplines of logic and linear thinking to the intuitive, nonlinear processes of creativity and imagination.”
A parallel literature formed around the adjacent term Imagination Age. The phrase has since recurred, independently and without cross-reference, in education, in cultural criticism, and as recently as November 2025 in a report published under this exact title by a global consultancy, proposing imagination as the organising resource of the next economy across five frontiers.
What twenty years of recurrence proves
Two things at once. That the phrase names something real — people keep reaching for it independently. And that the thing has never been defined — because every use makes the same undemanding claim, that imagination becomes more valuable.
Where 2006 was wrong
The original thesis expected logic and linear execution to be automated while creative work remained human. Generative AI automated the making, creative execution very much included. Right about the destination, wrong about the road.