In tune with the theories or in tune with the times?

Some time ago I chatted with a colleague from South Korea at a global corporate training session. We have kids that are about the same age so it was easy to find shared interests. We ended up comparing what could perhaps be called the knowledge culture of our respective countries (Sweden being the other one).

The comparison ended game, set, match to South Korea’s favor. Simply put, the Korean students spend their nights doing homework while the Swedish students spend their nights on – I don’t know – but not homework; South Korea is one of the top nations in the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) whereas Sweden ends up close to an unimpressive OECD average [1].

So are the Koreans, the Chinese, and the Japanese (all top PISA performers) going to eat our lunch in the future?

I have thought about this on and off since that conversation. It turns out that Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the US. Stockholm is only second to Silicon Valley in terms of unicorns (startups with market cap of more than a billion dollars) per capita according to the venture capital firm Atomico. It’s home to companies like Spotify, Klarna, Mojang (now Microsoft), and DICE (now Electronic Arts). Sweden ranks 2nd among the 133 economies featured in the Global Innovation Index [2].

So despite our mediocre PISA results, we seem to be doing fine in the tech domain. I think it comes down to (at least) three factors:

• Competent adult population
• Awareness of global trends
• Healthy lack of respect for authorities

Competent adult population

Despite our wanting performance in the PISA survey, we are ranked 3rd among nations in 2023 Survey of Adult Skills behind Finland and Japan, part of the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), the “adult PISA” [3]. Singapore has rank 19 and Korea rank 22 in the same survey.

My take on that is that the Nordic countries, all of which have good results in PIAAC, prioritize preparing students, not for immediate standardized testing success, but rather for long-term, flexible adaptability to real-world challenges. The Nordic nations prioritize student autonomy, critical thinking, and real-world applicability over rote memorization, standardized testing, and intense exam preparation.

Sweden’s innovation culture mirrors Schumpeter’s creative destruction model, where progress requires deliberately dismantling old structures (destructive creativity). I posit that high-performing PISA countries may in fact resist some forms of “creative destruction” due to higher societal emphasis on stability, continuity, and order.

Standardized exams (like those used in PISA) tend to emphasize convergent thinking—finding the one correct answer using logic and learned procedures. Creativity, on the other hand, requires divergent thinking—generating multiple novel solutions or ideas.

Awareness of global trends

Sweden’s historical identity as the “world’s most modern country” during the 1960s and 70s was tied explicitly to being ahead of global trends in gender equality, social democracy, urban development, and lifestyle innovation (e.g., IKEA, Volvo’s safety innovations, and welfare-state experimentation).

This historical pattern persists today. We are still leaders in for instance cashless payments, popular music, broadband access, mobile communication, and digital public services such as those of the Swedish Tax Agency (a normal tax return takes five minutes using a smartphone – no tax professional required).

We are also an open and well-travelled society, aware of trends in life-style, culture, technology etc in other parts of the world.

All this “trendiness” puts us in a good place to create new products and services with global appeal.

Healthy lack of respect for authorities

Sweden was never part of the Roman Empire. Scandinavian societies evolved independently with much looser power structures, more participatory tribal assemblies (things, like the Althing in Iceland), and a warrior-merchant ethos rather than centralized imperial bureaucracy.

Viking society was relatively flat compared to contemporary feudal Europe. While there were leaders (jarls, kings), loyalty was conditional—based on respect and results, not divine right or social caste.

Medieval Sweden had a much weaker feudal system than France, Germany, or England. Swedish peasants retained more rights, more independence, and even political representation.

The early 20th-century political project in Sweden emphasized flattening hierarchies, empowering the common man, and fostering collaboration across social classes. Corporatism (negotiations between unions, employers, and the state) further embedded a negotiation-oriented, low-hierarchy culture.

As a logical consequence of a history of independence and relatively low hierarchies we today live in a society in which respect must be earned continuously, not presumed based on position alone. Hierarchies are temporary and contingent, not absolute.

Sometimes this translates to a lack of respect for the law as in the case of two Swedish phenomena of the past, Kazaa and Pirate Bay. Sometimes it just translates to challenging old theories and truths and to bringing out new products such as Spotify or Skype to the market.

Conclusion

There is more to the competiveness of a country than PISA results. Mediocre PISA results are not the end of economic development. The question is: should I teach my children to show even less respect than they already do?

Links

[1] PISA in Wikipedia
[2] Global Innovation Index
[3] 2023 Survey of Adult Skills
[4] TED Talk: Do Schools Kill Creativity? (2006)