STEM is the acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, and is used when talking about what we need Our Young People to study in order for the United States to Stay Competitive in the world.
John Maeda, formerly president of RISD and now a design partner at KPCB, popularized the idea of turning STEM into STEAM — adding Arts (and design), because it’s clear that inventions that turn into innovations are often not just driven by the hard sciences.
However, this strikes me as insufficient. Because in my experience, the greatest source of insights for inspiring meaningful product and service creation comes not from the hard sciences, but from the social sciences. To turn STEM into STEAM into STREAM, where R stands for Research on people, their behaviors and contexts.
