‍(Photo by Learning Conference)

At this year’s Swedish Learning Conference, we had the privilege of hosting the main stage’s very first live hackathon. Instead of sitting back and listening, the entire audience rolled up their sleeves and co-created a collective picture of where Learning & Development (L&D) is heading – and what it will take to get there.

Download the presentation and results

Where am I in relation to the future?

We began with a simple but powerful check-in: Where are you in relation to the future of L&D? Using our favorite nautical metaphor, participants placed themselves in the scene. Some were already steering confidently toward the horizon, others felt like they were just climbing aboard, while a few were still treading water.

This exercise sparked immediate conversations. Where we see ourselves today says a lot about the opportunities – and challenges – we experience in our organizations.

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The future of L&D

Next, we asked everyone to distill their vision of the future into just three words. The result? A collective word cloud that reveals what matters most to the L&D community right now.

Words like human, adaptive, impactful, and collaborative stood out – alongside themes of AI, behavior change, and personalization. Together, they form a hopeful, ambitious, and pragmatic picture of the road ahead.

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Behaviors to let go of – and to embrace

Visions only become reality when behaviors change. So, we split the room in two: one half focused on the behaviors L&D needs to let go of, the other on the ones we must embrace.

The results show a clear pattern. Among the things to let go of:

• Defaulting to “just another course” as the solution
• Working in isolation instead of with the business
• Focusing on knowledge transfer over behavior change

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And on the embrace side:

• Acting as architects and enablers of behavior
• Driving both individual and structural enablers of change
• Leveraging AI and data to scale our impact

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What’s next?

The real challenge now is translating inspiration into concrete action back in your own context.

Feel free to use our design to spark conversations in your own team. Ask yourselves:

• Where are we on the boat?
• What three words define our future of L&D?
• Which behaviors will we let go of – and which will we embrace?

Together, we’re not just imagining the future. We’re building it.

And if you were part of the session – thank you for hacking with us!