A report from GE finds that the combination of networks and machines could add $10- to $15 trillion to the global GDP.

According to the report, the Industrial Revolution radically changed the way we use energy and make things. The Internet Revolution altered how we communicate, consume information, and spend money. A combination of these two transformations, called the Industrial Internet, now links networks, data and machines. It promises to remake global industry, boost productivity, and launch an entirely new age of prosperity and robust growth.

“The world is on the threshold of a new era of innovation and change with the rise of the Industrial Internet,” according to a new report written by Peter C. Evans, GE’s director of global strategy and analytics, and Marco Annunziata, GE’s chief economist. “It is taking place through the convergence of the global industrial system with the power of advanced computing, analytics, low-cost sensing and new levels of connectivity permitted by the Internet.”

Evans and Annunziata write that “the deeper meshing of the digital world with the world of machines holds the potential to bring about profound transformation to global industry, and in turn to many aspects of daily life, including the way many of us do our jobs.”

The authors found that in the U.S. alone the Industrial Internet could boost average incomes by 25 to 40 percent over the next 20 years and lift growth back to levels not seen since the late 1990s. If the rest of the world achieved half of the U.S. productivity gains, the Industrial Internet could add from $10 to $15 trillion to global GDP – the size of today’s U.S. economy – over the same period.

“With better health outcomes at lower cost, substantial savings in fuel and energy, and better performing and longer-lived physical assets, the Industrial Internet will deliver new efficiency gains, accelerating productivity growth the way that the Industrial Revolution and the Internet Revolution did,” Evans and Annunziata write. “These innovations promise to bring greater speed and efficiency to industries as diverse as aviation, rail transportation, power generation, oil and gas development, and health care delivery. It holds the promise of stronger economic growth, better and more jobs and rising living standards, whether in the U.S. or in China, in a megacity in Africa or in a rural area in Kazakhstan.”

Read the full report – “Industrial Internet: Pushing the Boundaries of Minds and Machines”.