07-07-2026IMPACT COUNCIL

Why Stockholm keeps producing AI-era founders

As AI shifts the value of work, people who can cross disciplines, combine ideas, and build become more valuable.

[Photo: Getty Images]

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What skills will matter in an AI economy? Few things are certain, but one seems to be: that cross-disciplinary builders are becoming more valuable. As machines automate the routine part of expertise, what stays scarce is a skill set now captured by the E-shaped professional.

Strategist Sarah DaVanzo first articulated the idea in the early 2010s: The most valuable people combine depth in one field (expertise), curiosity across others (exploration), real-world exposure (experience), and above all, the ability to build something that works (execution). If I-shaped professionals specialize and T-shaped ones bridge disciplines, E-shaped people add a final layer: They can also build things that work.

This year, Marc Andreessen updated the E-shaped concept for the AI age: AI collapses the boundaries between product, engineering, and design. Every coder now thinks they can be a product manager and designer. Every product manager thinks they can code. Every designer believes they can do both. And with AI, they’re essentially right.

A CITY OF CROSS-DISCIPLINARY BUILDERS

With its own combination of cross-sector density and institutional features, Stockholm has been producing this E-shaped talent for years. In the Swedish capital, serial boundary crossing is not only a late-career luxury. It is often how careers are formed.

Anton Osika went from CERN particle physics to e-commerce before Lovable. Daniel Ek moved from adtech to........

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