This year I attended for the first time the Almedalen week, a really peculiar Swedish happening where political parties alongside companies from all over the country gather to discuss matters of public interest. Anything from the hottest topics on the political agenda, to digitalization, collaboration, and innovation, is at the center of seminars, speeches, and other types of activities.

It is an exercise in democracy, and in many ways walking through the streets of the city of Visby during the Almedalen week, can give you a perfect sense of what both political parties, and some of the biggest companies in the country want to highlight and talk about.

Giving a full review would be impossible, but these are the most important trends I picked up from the seminars I attended.

INNOVATION - The key to differentiation lies in the ability to keep the Swedish values in an evolving society

The Almedalen week started with Sweden’s prime minister's talk. This is an election year in the country, so it is extra interesting to listen to the themes that she decided to address. What caught my attention is that she decided to highlight values in her speech. She talked about going back to the very root of ”Swedishness", the social contract where everyone has the same possibilities, where there are no hierarchies, collaboration is central, and everyone contributes to a greater good.

And those very same values were brought up by many entrepreneurs as Sweden’s secret sauce in the battle for innovation and digitalization. You could summarize it with a quote from a speaker: ”Fika creates innovation”.

And after working for more than 10 years in the country, I can only agree that the culture of taking breaks, working together, and learning from each other is the North Star that drives much of how many work in Sweden. From an external perspective, the benefits of such a culture could seem unclear. Still, I think there is no doubt about the long-term positive effects and business value creation of an environment that is built for enabling collaboration and reducing hierarchies. It is not by chance that the super famous Spotify model was born in Sweden and not in Silicon Valley. Here it is not about moving fast and breaking things, more about getting an understanding of what we are breaking while moving forward together.

At the same time, many discussions in Almedalen were about how to keep these values alive, in a society that is evolving more and more rapidly. Where integrating new people and cultures is fundamental to achieving really ambitious development goals, and where the key to keeping the front seat in innovation is creating the right conditions for everyone living and working in the country to live and breathe those values. It is about showing what collaboration can achieve, making an effort to take a step away from one’s own ideas and enlarge perspectives, and using technology to really move forward.

Two concrete actions in this direction caught my attention.

• The willingness to share competence and learnings between the private and the public sectors. There were discussions about how to help the public sector attract the right talents necessary to push forward central matters of the country’s future, such as green transformation and digitalization. I heard concrete tips on positioning, employer branding, and tech stack that were true signs of how to use each other’s strengths to move things forward.

• The dialogues on using technology as one of many means to reduce segregation and lower social barriers. I thought it was really inspiring to think about how you can do that both proactively and reactively. At school, by systematically making accessible for everyone those technical skills that will be needed in the future of the workforce and can open many doors. While already today, using the attraction power of tech companies as a catalyst for integrating into the job market and society both foreign talents and certain social categories.

RECRUITING - Lifelong learning to keep up with the demand of new talent, as well as future-proof the workforce

Definitely one of the biggest enablers that everyone was talking about was recruiting talents. The common view is that there is a real gap in competencies in the country, and not only when it comes to tech, but most generally to meet the visionary plan about shifting Sweden's production towards the green revolution. It is about engineers, as well as teachers, entrepreneurs, nurses, workers in the public service, and much more.

Interestingly many agree that the way to meet those challenges lies in a combination of a personal mindset and a shared culture of learning.

The common opinion is that one part of the solution is creating the appropriate toolset for everyone to be able to constantly up-skill and re-skill as the needs of the company and society evolve. This will lead to a whole new set of possibilities and open many doors for a more integrated and equal society. To quote Spotify’s head of HR “competence development needs to be the reason for being of all the companies in Sweden if they want to keep and attract talents”.

The other part of the solution is about opening more doors for talents who want to move to Sweden. It is as much about creating the possibility for integrating into society, as simplifying bureaucracy and rules at a country and a company level.

PROPERTY MARKET- Everyone sees the challenges, but there seems to be no concrete plan on how to act

One path I followed in Almedalen was about the property market, it was important to me to hear both political and industry opinions on themes like mobility, housing shortage, interest rate, and the importance of working towards the goal of ensuring everyone a place to live.

If I had to summarize many of the discussions I heard, I would say that everyone clearly sees the flaws of the system as it is today, yet there seems to be extremely low cooperation between the political parties, and the way forward on how to solve those issues seems to be neither clear nor prioritized. The most concrete ideas on how to address the property market challenges came from the industry, much more than from the political parties, which is really a shame considering that having a place to live is a human right and that many reforms need political support to get done.

If we really believe that having a stable and long-time solution for living is a human right and that it really plays a central role in making many other pieces of one’s life fall into place, then we really need to find new ways of helping young people, anyone who is new in the country, people with low incomes, families, young professionals, and elderly people to find a place to call home.

As much as the discussions made me feel a bit hopeless, they also made me directly reflect on what Hemnet can do to help fuel mobility in the market. There are 5 million properties in Sweden, and 10 million inhabitants, if we can play a role in helping everyone find the perfect home to match their life conditions and situation, we could help in creating a better society.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT - Technology can support a need, but only usage will create a product

And last but not least, of course, I had a bit of extra focus on the talks held by the two tech giants present at Almedalen: Google and Meta.

On Google’s side, I got to listen to the head of product who spearheaded the development of Hangout, Duo, and Meet.

A 25-year long (!!) journey that culminated in 2020 when 1 billion minutes (or 2 million years, if that is more relatable) were spent on Google conferencing tools.

Take a second to take that in - 2 million years of product usage.

A real life-changing moment that put the spotlight on a product that became fundamental in fulfilling a whole other set of needs than the ones it was born to meet. Listening to the journey was extremely fascinating, and while following it, I couldn’t help but reflect on the interaction between technology and human behavior.

One takeaway was that no tech innovation can stand the innovation created by usage.

In Meet’s case, the tech was there but was only the massive usage of 2020 and 2021 that gave birth to some outstanding features like video noise reduction (a real wow factor and a USP compared to any other video tool out there). On the other hand, as product development evolves with usage, it creates new behavior that could potentially impact the way we interact both with the technology and with each other.
One thought I had for example was: will noise reduction impact the way one’s presence is perceived in video meetings when the external circumstances are perceived in different ways? Will I for example look distracted in a meeting if there is a lot of traffic noise outside my window that nobody else can hear? And what kind of additional human interactions will be needed to keep up with the technological advancement?

Another interesting aspect is related to the future development of google Meet, where the focus of the team will shift from providing a good tool for everyone, to productivity. Spoiler alert: a new function could come soon your way and take notes and AP during the meeting (hello automatic transcription!). How will that impact your day-to-day life? Will it help you save time, or will it be the mother of many misunderstandings?

At Meta, the talk was centered around the long-term impact of social media on one’s public behavior. And even if the context was really different, the very core of tech shaping the way we act was the same. The examples that were lifted were from politicians.

The paradox that was presented is the following. Having a social media presence is expected and fundamental to creating trust within the public opinion, as well as a way to systematically present one’s value. At the same time, one out of five politicians decides not to use social media to express their opinion because of possible negative consequences created by his/her words. It is a personification of hate that doesn’t stop at one’s opinion but continues towards one’s person. A crude example of how technology created at the same time a behavior (I need to have an online presence) and a counter-behavior (I can’t stand the opinion connected with my online presence) as a reaction

In both cases, it is always fascinating to gain perspective on how usage creates a product and its turn technology shapes behaviors with wanted and in many cases unwanted consequences.