{"id":9685,"date":"2026-03-29T14:59:58","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T14:59:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=9685"},"modified":"2026-03-29T14:59:58","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T14:59:58","slug":"meow-wolf-is-ditching-the-experience-economy-for-the-transformation-economy-wait-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wildgreenquest.com\/?p=9685","title":{"rendered":"Meow Wolf is ditching the experience economy for the \u2018transformation economy.\u2019 Wait, what?\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"


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When the art collective Meow Wolf opened the doors of its very first immersive exhibition, House of Eternal Return<\/em>, on March 18, 2016, it had roughly 100 employees, less than $1,000 in its corporate bank account, and a dream. Ten years later, the company employs more than 1,000 people, operates five permanent exhibitions (with two more on the way), and has welcomed more than 13 million visitors.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Meow Wolf\u2019s early history reads like a tale of cosmic fortune: In 2008, a group of New Mexico-based artists got sick of the local art establishment; founded their own collective to host parties, rock shows, and art installations; and eventually parlayed that experience into a series of massive, surrealist fun houses backed by A Game of Thrones<\/em> author George R.R. Martin.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As of 2022, Meow Wolf had amassed more than $200 million in investment capital. The company has undergone two rounds of layoffs since then\u2014one in April 2024 and another in December<\/a> of that same year\u2014while moving forward with plans to expand its exhibition footprint. Meow Wolf declined to share current investment figures or annual revenue totals with Fast Company.<\/em><\/p>\n

Plenty has already been written about the whirlwind of those early days. But now, looking back on it all, it\u2019s become clear that Meow Wolf represents something much bigger than the sum of its trippy, psychedelic exhibitions. The company presaged, and in some ways kick-started, the boom of the \u201cexperience economy,\u201d a concept business strategists Joseph Pine and James Gilmore<\/a> invented in 1998 to describe a shift in consumer desire from goods and services to more intangible \u201cexperiences,\u201d like adventures, sensations, and memories.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The experience economy is no longer a theory; it\u2019s a flourishing business: Everyone seems to be cashing in, from the inflatable art-centric Balloon Museum<\/a> to the golf-meets-art-meets-cocktails establishment Swingers and the recent immersive production<\/a> of The Phantom of the Opera<\/em>. <\/p>\n

In 2022, the immersive entertainment industry was valued at more than $61 billion. In 2025, consulting firm Grand View Research more than doubled<\/a> that figure to nearly $138 billion, projecting the sector will be worth a whopping $1.024 trillion by 2033. In other words, the experience economy has officially hit the mainstream.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, according to Vince Kadlubek, one of Meow Wolf\u2019s original founders and its current \u201cchief vision officer,\u201d another big shift is coming. He believes that nascent tech and younger generations are kick-starting the \u201ctransformation economy\u201d: the final step in Pine and Gilmore\u2019s theory, wherein consumers are seeking not just an experience, but a personal, emotional, or spiritual outcome. They want to participate in something, and to be changed. Meow Wolf, Kadlubek says, has a plan to be ahead of that curve once again.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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I sat down with Kadlubek to discuss Meow Wolf\u2019s 10th anniversary and what\u2019s next for the experience economy. In our conversation, he shared:<\/p>\n