FOC Home 28Sep2010
Right after his graduation from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam, Janne Kyttanen founded Freedom Of Creation (FOC) in Helsinki, June 2000. The plan was bold: Start a company which would change the way all products were produced. Ship only data around the world in the form of 3D files and produce all products locally through 3D printing technologies…and do this with no investments, just sit behind the computer and work from the sofa …erhm..right:-)
“If I would have known what I was really getting into, I probably would have made different plans. But then again, the most valuable lesson I learned from my shrink is that there is no other way to learn except by doing. So making different plans would probably not have worked out anyway. Since I am a designer, the first 10 years has been a “learn from hard knocks” about all aspects needed to run a company and about what kind of people will contribute to the company’s success… Especially when creating something nobody has ever done before and that the market is not directly requesting. In the short term, it made absolutely no business sense to begin what we started. The running joke inside FOC is that 10 years ago we were 20 years too early. Regardless of the lack of any logic based on the traditional business manufacturing model, the foundation of the company ran purely on the passion to create a global design platform from which all creative freedoms that your heart could desire would become a reality. (more…)
