The symposium was motivated by the idea that Singapore and Sweden have much to learn from each other, and indeed, conversations with Swedish researchers and friends provided grist for reflection.
There is much to admire about Sweden. A country of a mere 10.6 million people – not even twice Singapore’s population – Sweden has produced an impressive array of global brand names, with H&M, Ikea, Volvo, Ericsson, Tetra Pak and Spotify, to name just a few. Thirty-nine Swedes have won the Nobel Prize, named after the Swedish inventor of dynamite. Notable Swedish innovations include safety matches, the gamma knife and Bluetooth. The popular games Candy Crush and Minecraft are also Swedish, as are global chart-topping bands Abba, Roxette and Ace of Base.
Singapore may have had a shorter runway since gaining independence, but we clearly have a long way to catch up with Sweden in terms of world-leading brands, breakthrough innovations and cultural exports.
Where Singapore excels is in governance and efficiency, which have seen our country achieve median worker incomes comparable to Sweden’s. But to keep progressing in the next phase of development, particularly in the age of AI, Singapore will require something different – the kind of innovation and creativity that Sweden is known for.
Accounting for the innovation gap
Sweden’s prodigious innovation output has been linked with the country’s strong investment in R&D, close ties among academia, government and industry, strong digital infrastructure and global orientation. These are factors that Singapore too does fairly well in.
Indeed, in the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo) Global Innovation Index 2025, Singapore does as well as or better than Sweden in areas such as human capital and institutions; however, we are ranked 15th in creative outputs, behind Sweden in second place.
The innovation gap between the two countries likely reflects deeper social and cultural factors.
At the symposium I attended, Singaporean and Swedish universities shared ideas and findings on how AI is shaping education, work and society. Those of us from Singapore tended to be more task-oriented, focused on how to harness AI to improve learning outcomes and productivity at work. By contrast, many of the Swedish presentations were more philosophical and contemplative in orientation, reflecting on the place of AI in work and society.
The symposium was perhaps a microcosm of the Singaporean and Swedish approaches when confronted with a new technology. Our instinct is to leverage technology to stay ahead of the competition; the Swedes have a more holistic approach centred as much on the humanities and social sciences as it is on the technology itself.
However, an overly pragmatic stance may mean that our institutions and people miss out on insights that come from deep reflection, which could inform the foundations of human contribution and learning in the AI age. With AI increasing its cognitive lead over human beings, and user interfaces becoming ever more intuitive, human insights may turn out to be more valuable than technical skills in the longer term.
While Singapore’s 15-year-olds topped the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) creative thinking test, the question is whether our test-taking smarts will translate into breakthrough innovation in the years to come.
Breakthroughs in the arts, sciences and technology often have to overcome significant hurdles before gaining acceptance – precisely because of their paradigm-shifting nature. This requires intellectual passion, independence of mind, self-confidence, an “outsider mentality” and many years of toil and perseverance – qualities that may be at odds with a pragmatic mindset that seeks quick results, recognition and rewards.
For instance, the first Swedish Nobel laureate, Svante August Arrhenius, received a fourth-class degree for his doctoral dissertation on electrolytic dissociation, an idea which eventually won him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1903. Undeterred by his failure to impress his professors, Arrhenius sent his findings to scientists in other parts of Europe, eventually gaining recognition in his home country for his achievements.
Organisational culture may also impact innovation. Swedish enterprises are known for their flat structure and culture of open communication, which fosters collaboration. In Singapore, where organisations tend to be more hierarchical, with greater deference to authority, those in junior positions may sometimes feel inhibited in expressing their ideas or challenging received wisdom.
For innovation to flourish, it helps to have a research ecosystem that supports ground-up ideation and experimentation. On our trip to Stockholm, my colleagues and I visited the Research Institutes of Sweden, which impressed us with its one-stop suite of support for innovators through extensive public-private networks and test-bedding facilities.
Singapore, too, has a world-class research and innovation ecosystem, but tends to be more top-down in the setting of research priorities and may put researchers under greater pressure to demonstrate impact and relevance. While the Singapore approach generates quicker results in targeted areas, it may be less conducive to serendipitous breakthroughs.
Singapore may lag behind Sweden in creative output, but we are progressing in the right direction. Today, more young Singaporeans are taking up intellectual and creative pursuits, encouraged and enabled by schools and public funding agencies. The Ministry of Education has sought to shift focus from testing to learning, trimming curriculum to free up time for exploratory learning.
More Singaporeans are also making their mark in creative pursuits. For instance, artist Priscilla Tey recently won a top prize in the World Illustration Awards 2025, while writer Agnes Chew was named the Asia regional winner of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2023.
However, our societal milieu is still one that encourages a narrower form of competition. This is in large part due to the high cost of living and unequal economic rewards across sectors and occupations, which creates strong pressure for young Singaporeans to get ahead in the economic rat race. A more egalitarian society could relieve such pressure, encouraging more Singaporeans to indulge their passions as innovators, artistes and entrepreneurs.
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Is the welfare state the answer?
Sweden’s egalitarian society is underpinned by a comprehensive welfare state, which provides generous benefits for all residents from cradle to grave. A pertinent question is whether Singapore should emulate Sweden’s welfare state to encourage Singaporeans to take risks and explore alternative pathways in life.
The answer isn’t so straightforward. The Nordic social democratic model, long admired internationally, is coming under increasing fiscal and political strain.
As a Swedish friend explained to me, Sweden’s welfare state is based on a strong sense of social solidarity and shared values. Of late, the foundations of this social compact have been rattled by immigration, which has seen the proportion of foreign-born people in Sweden increase in the 2000s from just over 11 per cent of the population to 20 per cent.
While immigration has been an economic lifeline for Sweden, given its falling birth rates and labour shortfalls, some perceive that immigrants are milking the welfare system without contributing their fair share. This is because unemployment and poverty rates are significantly higher among immigrants.
Just last week, the Swedish government announced that it would be cutting benefits for large families in its 2026 budget. By contrast, the Singapore Government is now giving additional benefits to families with three or more children under the Large Families scheme announced in Budget 2025.
Apart from immigration, demographics also do not work in Sweden’s favour. An ageing population leads to higher pension and social service expenditures, while shrinking the tax base. Despite Sweden’s emphasis on work-life balance and gender equality, along with generous childcare and education benefits, the birth rate is around 1.44, higher than Singapore’s but far below the replacement rate of 2.1. This in turn necessitates further immigration. The sustainability of the Swedish – and more generally, the Nordic model – is therefore questionable.
While Singapore’s low tax system is very different from Sweden’s, it is worth considering what more could be done here to strengthen social support and assurance without overstretching the state’s coffers.
A more egalitarian society – both in income distribution and respect for those who have chosen less well-trodden pathways in career and life – could be the secret sauce that unlocks Singapore’s creative potential.
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Singapore’s strengths in governance
In fact, combining this with Singapore’s existing strengths could be a potent recipe for success. Even advanced economies like Sweden admire Singapore’s policy coherence, public resourcing and coordination.
In education, for example, Singapore’s national school system enables additional financial resources and good teachers to be spread out across a larger number of schools, offsetting the advantages enjoyed by students in the more popular or privately funded schools. This has led to high averages in educational outcomes, such that even our students from lower socioeconomic family backgrounds outperform the OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) average in the Pisa tests.
Sweden, however, is grappling with growing disparities in educational outcomes within its decentralised system. While Sweden’s average Pisa scores are above the OECD average in reading, mathematics and science, the gap between the strongest and weakest students widened over the most recent period of observation from 2018 to 2022.
Singapore has also been quick to develop a coherent national AI strategy, which has become a point of reference for countries seeking to develop their own AI technology roadmaps.
There is indeed much that Singapore and Sweden can learn from each other – not by directly transplanting policies and programmes, but through careful reflection, distilling what is worth emulating and adapting. I look forward to more exchanges with our Swedish counterparts as we navigate changes in education, work and innovation in the AI age.
Terence Ho is deputy executive director of the Institute for Adult Learning. He is also the author of How Singapore Beat The Odds (World Scientific, 2025).
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