[gvr]

I'm a Swedish product designer and engineer, and think Swedish creativity is the same and any other country's: it's about taking stuff you've learned in one field and applying it to another.

Swedish people in my not entirely unbiased opinion tend to be exceptionally good at this and I think that's because education tends to be very broad - if you want to take music lessons and learn to play an instrument in Sweden it's essentially paid for by the state. Want to create a study group to learn about painting, same thing. If you go to study say engineering physics at a masters program, they'll also force you to learn at least the basics in fields like construction, electrical engineering, software engineering, etc. When you exit high school, even if you've taken a scientific route, you've learned about wood work, mechanical engineering, probably at least 2 languages beyond Swedish, etc.

Part of this I think is attributable to the culture isn't so focused on knowledge being measured or "accounted for" financially.

A second reason is probably that it's pretty cold in Sweden in the winters, but I don't think that has nearly as much to do with it.

Disclaimer: I'm born 77 and left the country 99. Some people claim that education isn't as good as it used to be. I don't know, but I think most of the people creating kick ass products right now are people that were born in the 80s or earlier.