The Stockholm Effect: How Culture Drives Growth — and What Companies Need to Learn From It
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In December 2025, a red door placed outside the Swedish Parliament and an identical door twelve kilometres away in Tensta made global headlines and filled Stockholm's hotels. That wasn't luck — it was strategy. Nobel Week Lights turned cultural investment into tourism revenue, city brand equity, and international positioning. This session asks the question boards are starting to take seriously: if a city can use creativity as an engine for economic growth, why aren't companies doing the same?
Arts Dynamics, Epicenter's Creative Tech Cluster, convenes business leaders, policymakers, creative professionals, technologists, and investors to examine the measurable business case for culture — and how immersive experience, creative ecosystems, and long-term cultural thinking are becoming the next competitive advantage.
This session brings together three practitioners who are building at that intersection in real time, to answer the questions that boardrooms, city governments, and investors are only beginning to ask:
What is the measurable return on cultural investment?
How do immersive technologies create financial value — not just aesthetic value?
Founder & Cluster Captain — Arts Dynamics, Epicenter Stockholm
Founder, CEO, Cluster Captain of Arts Dynamics, Epicenter Stockholm´s Creative Tech Cluster. Leads the Nordic region's premium ecosystem connecting cultural entrepreneurs, tech companies, the private and public sector, academia and investors. Host and moderator of this session.
Festival Director and Co-Founder, Nobel Week Lights
Lara co-founded Nobel Week Lights in 2020, now one of the Nordic region’s largest light festivals. Showcasing light art tied to Nobel laureates’ discoveries, it blends art, science, and public engagement through diverse installations, education, and outreach, fostering deep audience connections to culture in public spaces. The artistic program of the festival aims to inspire, engage, and make groundbreaking ideas accessible to all.
Co-founder at SMASH
Veronica Reed is co-founder of SMASH – Experience Design Studio, where she leads the creation of interactive installations and projection mapping experiences. Her work blends storytelling, technology, and play to transform public spaces into immersive environments that engage audiences and create meaningful, shared experiences.
Chairman, Partner, Head of Advisory at Epicenter
Edgar leads Epicenter’s advisory services and supports large companies and scaleups with hands-on entrepreneurial experience in business development, rapid growth, and international expansion.
He has a solid track record as both a coach and entrepreneur, particularly in scaling and high-growth strategies.
With over 25 years of experience building companies—as an entrepreneur and management consultant—Edgar has proven expertise in growth. As CEO of Garantum, he grew his team from 15 to 250 people.
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