Spring’s Thomas Arctaedius is now professor of entrepreneurship

Thomas Arctaedius, CEO at Spring, has been appointed affiliated professor in entrepreneurship at the Royal College of Music (Kungliga Musikhögskolan). We took the opportunity to ask him a few questions.

- How did everything start? 

I’ve been working with innovation, entrepreneurship and startups for many years, in business as well as at universities (Stockholm University, Royal Institute of Technology and Stanford University). I’ve worked with incubators and was one of the founders of Stockholm’s first social impact hub for startups (Center för socialt entreprenörskap Sverige, CSES). My work at the Royal College of Music started as a collaboration with ScorX  and Spring. ScorX is one of Spring’s innovation projects, a tool and e-shop for choir singers and leaders to practice scores. The aim for Musikhögskolan was to start using ScorX as a part of their programmes. My work now is centered around musical entrepreneurship and building a new curriculum for artists and musicians in entrepreneurship.

Spring has also been part of a project where we explored the concept of the audience being a collaborator in the concert experience and a co-creator of the music experience.

- Is there anything you have learned from your work at Spring that you can bring to KMH? or vice versa?

There is a strong link between user experience and music. The methods Spring use in digital development, can be used in music as well. With these methods it is possible to explore what the audience wants in a musical context.

Robert Horngren from Spring developed a tool to control a sound dome in one of KMH’s concert venues. The Sound dome is an advanced speaker system with 49 speakers that give the participants a three-dimensional sound experience. This project was a great example of how user experience can be combined with music.

- Has your interest in music been strengthened during your time at KMH?

I didn’t start at KMH because of a music interest, but I have become more aware of music’s role in society. I had not reflected so much about it before but have begun to do it during my time here and have been fascinated by the importance of music. Can you imagine a world completely without music?