The KW area tech scene should shoot for a STEAMier atmosphere

Maria Legault
Jul 21, 2017 · 4 min read

There have been a number of launches for new innovation hubs in KW in recent months — occasions for administrators and politicians to strut their stuff and pitch their ideas, and themselves, to each other and to community members. The speeches at ribbon cuttings may seem rote at times, but even buzzwords can become telling of the tenor of the times and the values of the community. The word “innovation” itself has been much in evidence lately, alongside “technology,” “jobs,” “scale,” and “STEM” — for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math — among others.

But sometimes it is what is not mentioned that sticks out. At a number of recent launch events, we noticed that words like “creativity,” “design,” “making,” or “culture” were rare at best. And this troubled us.

In recent years, many thinkers and policymakers around the world, but particularly in the US and Europe, have begun to refer to STEAM instead of STEM when speaking about innovation. The A stands for “Arts,” and acknowledges the importance that those abovementioned missing words play in the creation and dissemination of new ideas and technologies.

If we are to be truly honest, innovation was always as much about beauty, creativity, making stuff, and packaging and sharing products and ideas as it was about elegant equations or precise blueprints. The juggernaut of American capitalism in the last century influenced the entire world in no small measure because of its aesthetic power: Levis, muscle cars, Fender Stratocasters, glossy magazine spreads. Even the Apollo space program was not only a marvel of science and engineering but also a massive and meticulously crafted exercise in storytelling and mythmaking (a point that someone like Elon Musk understands extremely well today).

Today, that letter A is arguably even more important. At Apple, the world’s largest company by market capitalization, the legendary designer Jony Ive is second in authority only to the company’s CEO, and helps oversee everything from architecture to the layout of circuit boards, not to mention advertisements, store layouts, and iPhones.

Facebook, Google and Amazon — all of which are more-or-less media companies in all but name — are similarly driven by, and dependent on, creative strategy and by the generation and distribution of ideas, culture, words and images. In such a landscape, it’s no wonder that a 2016 study found that 36 per cent of the top 25 funded US start-ups had designers as co-founders. Today, the “attention economy” is the great arbiter of success, and would-be innovators who can’t tell a great story about their work, or create a truly stimulating experience for their users, will fail.

To be sure, aesthetics haven’t been at the heart of our local approach in the past. To put it bluntly, we have always been more of a nuts and bolts, no nonsense, community — known for its clever engineers and diligent actuaries rather than its quirky aesthetes. (As often as not, local artists have been fine with this state of affairs, content to work on their own terms and to define themselves against the mainstream.) Perhaps it has something to do with our area’s practical, no-nonsense Germanic roots. But in the current environment, an over-emphasis on the purely practical could, ironically, end up being the less practical approach.

The good news is that things are getting STEAMier around here already. Conestoga College, Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Waterloo have excellent, and expanding, programs in relevant fields, such as graphic design, game design, UX, marketing and digital media. The launch last fall of 44 Gaukel, a combined workspace for creative organizations and hardware-focused startups, was an important step in the right direction. (Kudos to Waterloo’s Accelerator Centre for its support of this forward-thinking initiative.)

So let’s make sure that our language does justice to these trends and helps to nurture them. Some may say that we are merely nitpicking. After all, does a single letter in an acronym really make all that much difference? And does anyone even listen all that closely to the precise words in a ribbon cutting speech, except, perhaps, if their own name happens to be mentioned? But if the world of today tells us anything, it’s that words, and the stories we tell with them, are powerful things. If the first industrial revolution was powered by steam, it’s looking increasingly likely that the third will run on STEAM.

Let’s make sure we are on that train.

Nick Dinka is Director of Communication and Cultural Programming at the Wilfrid Laurier University Library, where he oversees the activities of the Robert Langen Art Gallery and the Story Exchange culture series/creative incubator.

Maria Legault is Program Coordinator for the Digital Innovation Skills Certificate (DISC) and sole proprietor of Nautilus Consulting. She is a lifelong resident of Waterloo Region, currently residing in a summer-time trailer home along the banks of the Grand River.

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