2026-04-01: Sweden as a nation of innovation is not solely about engineering; it is about a distinct culture built on a foundation that is both human and technical.
This is not, in fact, anything new: the best innovations arise when technological development meets the right questions – what is the solution for? How can it change our lives? For whom?
IKEA, Volvo and Spotify are examples of the same phenomenon. New technologies developed with an understanding of people’s life aspirations, with a vision of road safety, or with insight into how music forms part of everyday life.
In collaboration with Konstfack’s Vice-Chancellor, Anna Valtonen, I have written the essay “The Two As in STEAM”, which develops these ideas further. This has taken place within the framework of the Swedish Futures project run by the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences (IVA).
STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics – is an acronym most people are familiar with, and many have also encountered contexts where it has been transformed into STEAM, meaning that the technical and scientific fields have been enriched with an A for Arts.
Our aim is to show that the A has so far perhaps been about understanding the human being for whom innovations are created, but that there is also a more radical and experimental perspective – imagining what does not yet exist. This is what we call the second A.
This has always been the strength of artistic practice, but precisely this – the imagination-driven, visionary capacity to see beyond the obvious – is also a prerequisite for truly groundbreaking research.
Chalmers already has strong environments that correspond to the first A in our interpretation of STEAM. This is particularly true of architecture, engineering design and interaction design, where technology meets people’s needs, behaviours and experiences. At the same time, there are important complementary environments within Science, Technology and Society, communication and learning, as well as innovation and entrepreneurship, which contribute an understanding of how technology operates in society and achieves impact. Taken together, I see these activities as forming a broad foundation for the first A: understanding and shaping technology in its context.
The second A – imagining new possible futures – is more fragmented, but with clear early signs, for example in various interdisciplinary initiatives. It is both interesting and important to consider how we can strengthen these capabilities going forward so that they become an integrated part of Chalmers’ development.
It is more important than ever at a time when humanity, for the first time, is actively participating in evolutionary processes: designing materials at the atomic level, tailoring genetic material, training artificial intelligences. In such a context, we need both the courage and the ability to think anew, and to create the future we wish to live in.
We have already begun through collaborations between Chalmers and Konstfack. I myself have led exercises with art students who have been asked to build on technological megatrends and explore what these might mean for us as human beings. But we also believe that this perspective must be broadly integrated into Swedish education, that we need to design academic environments that actively break down disciplinary boundaries, and that it must become part of Sweden’s innovation strategy on a wide scale.