Every year, the Inspiration Seminars take place before the Swedish Steel Prize awards ceremony and gala dinner. It is a chance for SSAB customers, partners and employees to become motivated to think outside the box when developing new and useful applications from high strength steel. During the day, the finalists for the Swedish Steel Prize are presented and are asked questions directly from the audience. In between, there is entertainment, important news from SSAB employees and three excellent guest speakers.
On the 17th of November, over 600 people stepped off of buses and into the beautiful München Bryggeriet conference center in Stockholm Sweden for this year’s Inspiration Seminars. All of them had high expectations.
The day’s moderator was the entertaining David Phillips who energized the audience throughout the day with his comic relief and excellent insight into the human mind.
The first guest speaker of the day was Cecilia Rydinger Alin, one of Sweden’s most famous orchestra conductors. She spoke about her role as a leader and drew many parallels between her job as a conductor and that of a manager within a company. “Aura, charisma and personality are some of the most important factors for success when leading,” she stated. Then she demonstrated her point by conducting the entire audience in a rendition of “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” using different leadership personalities.
The next guest speaker was Mikael Syväjärvi, a researcher at Sweden’s Linköping University who develops one of the world’s leading technologies for producing graphene, a Nobel Prize winning material.
“Years ago, steel changed the world. I believe graphene will change it again,” began Mikael.
The audience listened enthusiastically as Mikael explained a long list of uses and potential uses for this new wonder material. He also explained what is needed to take the technology out of the laboratory and into mainstream use.
The final presentation of the day had the audience on the edge of their seats.
Trend spotter and futurologist Magnus Lindkvist presented an unforgettable speech about how businesses perceive the future.
Magnus challenged the audience to change the moralistic view of the future that most people take when thinking ahead. He urged everyone to dare to do three things when creating the future: experiment, recycle failures and be patient.