Tal till slutkonferensen för det europeiska året för kreativitet och innovation

 

First of all I would like to thank all of you who are present here today, not least of course all the winners of the Innovation and Creativity Camp.

It has been an intensive year for all of us, and it is with mixed feelings I attend this closing conference. The Swedish presidency is coming to its end and I think many of us will look back and be amazed with the obstacles that we, together, managed to surmount. Politics in general requires both creativity and innovation and we have certainly needed both in order to accomplish what we set out to do in the year of 2009. 

For the past six months, I have been travelling back and forth preaching what I believe to be one of the most important contributions of the Swedish presidency -  the knowledge triangle. I can think of few policy inventions more in line with the Year of Creativity and Innovation than this attempt to infuse more entrepreneurial spirit into the discussion on research and education. Considerable attention has been given to the links between research and innovation, while neglecting education as the basis for the triangle. We decided to invite the universities and other education institutions to pay greater attention to their role as a source of “transferable knowledge”. 

On this, I have met great understanding, so I think chances are good that the work we have begun will continue. A number of excellent programs in the educational field are already up and running within the European framework, but more is needed. The founding of EIT – The European Institute of Innovation and Technology – can serve as one concrete, important example on our dedication to meet the demands of the future. If we want to benefit from all the opportunities globalisation will offer over the next twenty years, increasing competition both within national educational systems and on a global scale is imperative. We have a responsibility to fix our focus on the future instead of trying to resist change. Creating a knowledge-based society will be demanding,  not least because it challenges so many of our preconceptions. It is nevertheless absolutely necessary.

Recent research show that creativity must be placed in a wider context – just as culture is increasingly seen as part of the productive sector. According to sociologists, economists and historians, culture plays an important role in creating and maintaining a competitive economy. In these fast-moving times, we need original minds to help us explore new ways to tackle complicated problems, not only new ways to administer the solutions we currently use.

Economic growth has always been the result of ground-breaking thought and innovation, of someone looking beyond the obvious. Therefore, the educational system must be able to produce both “ordinary” scientific research of high quality, while leaving room for the genial. Unfortunately, all systems tend to conserve rather than to create. The famous scientist PM Medawar once said that “the human mind treats a new idea the same way the body treats a strange protein, it rejects it”. This, we need to get past – on all levels, and not just in the universities.

The citizens of tomorrow must be better equipped to deal with global competition than we are today. That is why the Swedish presidency have chosen the theme of children’s and young people’s creativity as the overall priority in the area of culture and media. 

For us, access to culture remains a core issue. All parents haven´t got the means to help their children express themselves creatively, but no society can afford to miss out on a young bright person because of his or her socio-economic background.  The schools can play a key part in promoting equality. Many children have their first exposure to literature in school, which makes the teachers Sweden’s most important cultural agents. That is the reason why SEK 55 million is allocated each year to promoting cooperation between school and cultural life within the so called Creative Schools Initiative. 

So far, the work done in the first year is very promising. In the short period of time that the initiative has existed, 87% of the municipalities and 33% of the independent schools have applied for funds to develop their work on culture in school. The Creative Schools initiative breaks new ground as the largest initiative we have ever undertaken to empower pupils with cultural experiences. Through this initiative, we are able to invite our young to share our common cultural heritage – by no means an unimportant task in a world where national boundaries means less and less and traditional hierarchies are disintegrating. 

The second priority for the Swedish presidency have been to develop a strategy for entrepreneurship in the educational area. We believe that creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship helps advance economic growth and employment but also personal development. Many of the distinctive features of a good entrepreneur – the ability to solve problems, think innovatively, plan ones work, take responsibility and cooperate with others – are also qualities that students at different levels need to develop to complete their studies and to be successful in their adult lives.

As with most things, we need to start at a young age. Throughout upper secondary school and post-secondary education, it seems reasonable to give greater emphasis on the skills and abilities needed to start a business. Higher up on the educational ladder, entrepreneurship programs can include both theoretical and practical studies of the process, from testing the commercial viability of an idea to setting up and establishing a company on the market. Again, a braver approach is needed. Thomas Alva Edison, who managed to invent both the telephone as well as the wonderful quote “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration” also said “I have not failed, I have just discovered a thousand ways that doesn´t work”. Edison should know, because it turned out that he was as bad at commercializing his inventions that he was brilliant at coming up with them but nevertheless that´s the spirit I would like to see more of in Europe.

On that note, I get to the third, and last priority for us during this year of creativity and innovation. To encourage more education in mathematics and science.

Here, we need to look at the entire educational system, from pre-school to post doc level. If we start from the top- down, we have founded a special delegation (Teknikdelegationen) with the difficult, but important job to stimulate an interest in science among both children and adults. The delegation is to map out the future need for well-educated engineers as well as to help make the technological programs more attractive in the universities.

Recent studies point to a complex relationship between young peoples´ interest in science and the level of development in the society they live in. One would think that the amount of technology present in the every day life of our kids would stimulate a curiosity in how it actually works. In reality, the opposite is true. The richer the society, the less inclined we find the young to choose an education dedicated to technology or science. There are gender differences, but in an international comparison, GDP matters more than sex.  In a famous study (ROSE) almost a 100% of the young people asked in Uganda answered that they were interested in how a computer works. Only 45% said so among the Swedish girls asked, and 70% of the boys.  Consequently, almost 90% of the boys and girls asked in Uganda stated that they would like to work in science when they grow up, whereas 10% of the Swedish girls saw a future in science, and 55% of the boys.

In Europe, the gap between female and male school performance is smaller in mathematics than in reading, and the gap is shrinking in no less than nineteen countries. Here we see bright signs of girls performing ever better in science, which would be a uniformly good thing if it were not for the fact that there is a parallel development of boys performing worse in the same subjects. 

Now, does this matter?

We believe so. Globalization is not a theoretical concept any more – it is a reality, and a reality that will test our systems and societies hard in the near future. We know that our survival on the top in terms of wealth and development is dependent on us being able to compete with outstanding technology and research. That Uganda houses ambitious young people is a good thing. But it points to one, clear fact: we can not rest. If you snooze, you loose.

A quick glance at the projections of the future provides a wake-up call. A global middle class of about a billion people is emerging. In 2025, 90% of them will live in countries that we have grown used to regard as developing countries. Deregulation, technological development and a strong focus on education have enabled previously poverty-stricken parts of the world to challenge the West in areas where we have been comfortably ahead for years. This is especially visible in terms of research. Emerging economies in Asia and Latin America are investing heavily in R& D. If they continue in the current pace, they will overtake Europe in about 10 years.

According to the Brussels-based think tank EIN, China and India are likely to account for 50% of the World GDP by 2060. And not for the first time, they actually did already in 1820. This re-emergence of Asia and shift in economic power will confront Europe with a radical challenge. It will depend on us Europeans to decide whether this coming relative decline of Europe compared to the rise of Asia will remain over the next twenty years – the consequence of a simple catching up exercise – or mean that Europe is now in the process of being definitively overtaken by younger and more dynamic nations.

So is this, as Rudyard Kipling wrote, the end of the world for us Europeans? Not with a bang, but with a whimper? 

I personally do not think so. The challenges we face must be met the same way we have always dealt with competition. We get better. The fact that new markets are emerging must be seen as a golden industrial opportunity. We have done it before, and we can do it again. Humans have always used their imagination to think the unthinkable, and, having done that, go about overcoming obstacles no one thought could ever be overcome. It is the entrepreneurial spirit – that very special stubbornness – that has advanced our society, but an entrepreneurial drive would have meant nothing if man weren’t also equipped with curiosity and creativity. As a minister of higher education and research, I am constantly surprised and humbled by the force of the human mind.

The way to look for the future is not to see the challenges as insurmountable obstacles but as opportunities to be seized: We Create. We Innovate. We Grow.

Thank you.