Enjoy the reading:

• Blog Post: “Danes in Space?”

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• Blog Post: “Data, Information, Content and Complexity”

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• Blog Post: “Weed, Sap, Actinic Keratoses, Intersections & Experiments”

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• Blog Post: “Airplanes & Skunk Works”

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• Blog Post: “Amateur enthusiast’s helium balloon beats NASA”

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• Blog Post: “The ‘Old’ Brands and the ‘New’ Brands”

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• Blog Post: “The Opposable Mind”

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• Blog Post: “Recommended Reading”

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• Blog Post: “Airstream Trailers & Social Media”

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• Blog Post: “Dunbar Numbers”

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We conceptualize, design, establish business models- and plans, before assembling the right team of skilled technicians, business- and design people to assist and develop. Orchestrating the process and the interdisciplinary integration, along with the involvement of end-users to ensure user-driven innovation, we keep taking care of the idea from the early stages to the finished end product. And the process don’t stop until the product’s fully matured and ready to leave our cozy lab on it’s own.”

Do you have an idea – or need advice on how to move along with your idea?

We have loads of good ideas but love to meet and listen to passionate people with interesting projects, so if you have an idea or need advice, feel free to contact us or drop by for a coffee.

Peter Just, Co-founder, Partner: Passionate, inventive, entrepreneurial.
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Peter has always been preoccupied with finding and exploring unknown spots, changing traditional perceptions and ways of thinking. Whether it is in art, film-making, inventions or communications, one of Peter’s key competencies is to connect his creative passion with the strategic perspective that will result in a disrupted business idea.
Email: peter@fourmation.dk
LinkedIn: http://dk.linkedin.com/in/justdrengen
Twitter: www.twitter.com/justdrengen

Hans Henrik H. Heming, Co-founder & Partner: Creative, structural, enthusiastic.
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Hans Henrik has relentlessly challenged the limits in large companies, particularly in the financial sector but also within the design industry. Hans Henrik has always been at the absolute forefront of developments within the Internet and technology – and how to apply these changes to businesses.

Email: hans.henrik@fourmation.dk
LinkedIn: http://dk.linkedin.com/in/hanshenrikheming
Twitter: www.twitter.com/publicmind
Blog: www.publicmind.dk

Per Feldthaus, Co-founder & Partner: Designer, innovator, strategist.
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Per is a passionate design thinker, merging a rational analytical approach with an intuitive co-creative approach to innovation. As a Honorary Professor at the Aarhus School of Architecture and Steering Committee member of the Beijing Tsinghua University MEGA-Master Programme he is our link to the latest international academic research.
Email: per@fourmation.dk
LinkedIn: http://cn.linkedin.com/pub/per-feldthaus/3/7b6/aa1

Martin Hartmann Jacobsen, Associated Partner: Communicator, conceptualizer, thinker.
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Martin is on a dedicated quest to merge his educational background in traditional offline communication with a digital approach to all things relating to communication – combining the better of the two worlds with a creative and skewed mindset.
Email: martin@fourmation.dk
LinkedIn: http://dk.linkedin.com/in/martinhartmannjacobsen
Twitter: www.twitter.com/martinjacobsen

Fourmation invents, designs and builds by creating, conceptualizing and executing ideas into new products and services. Operating from Copenhagen and with our office in Palo Alto, we are close to the technology and design-thinking epicenter in Silicon Valley – allowing Fourmation, our partners and our network to benefit from the newest research and development.

A lot of people talk but very few act. We don’t just talk – we do.  And what we do is basically pretty simple: we turn good ideas into profitable products.

Wosju

Wosju is a new service which enables you to navigate and search your social network for the best match-up – to any person or entity – uniquely tailored to your needs. Launched in a very limited private beta in March 2011, we have been testing Wosju along with more than 700 dedicated users. The initial phase of Wosju resulted in enormous buzz Wosju was selected as one of the 18 finalists for the prestigious “The Next Web Startup Rally 2011″ competition in Amsterdam. Also a result of the the initial testing phase was a lot of good ideas that the Wosju team is currently working hard to implement – meaning Wosju has moved into stealth mode.

For more information, go to http://www.wosju.com

Bridge4People – Revolutionizing Bridge

It’s about play, learning and socializing with bridge players all over the world.
Worldwide, more than 70 million people indulge in the traditional game of bridge. This highly complex game has been played by passionate players for decades – but only locally. Bridge4People and the BridgeSpinner product is about to change this.

With the BridgeSpinner, players can defy local and play against opponents in every part of the world – be it private games or major tournaments. Consisting of a proprietary card handling device, two decks of cards and easy-to-use software on a mobile device, every BridgeSpinner kit allows up to four players to play against any opponents they wish, regardless of location. Every game will be recorded and analyzed, compared to other players’ actions – and summarized into advice on how to improve your game. Bringing web2.0 to the bridge community.
The BridgeSpinner delivers an unprecedented bridge experience and is a true revolution of the game.

For more information, go to www.bridge4people.com.

Projects in stealth

We have a bunch of other projects in the pipeline. We’ll reveal them once they have been thoroughly nurtured in our cozy lab.

The Danish “Tycho Brahe” Spacecraft

But we think the project deserves a bit of our attention as well. Why? In short: it’s a fantastic project. Kristian Von Bengtson and Peter Madsen have created something truly spectacular by executing an idea that would normally include NASA and billions of dollars. Instead, they have built their very own Spacecraft and floating platform, and they are now about to launch their HEAT 1X it for the very first time. If the test launch, including a dummy, is successful, they will improve the rocket before sending Peter Madsen into space – making Denmark just the fourth country in the world to complete a manned journey into space… And in sharp contrast to the United States, the Soviet Union and China, the Danes will do it without government funding.

A few other interesting facts:

- The rocket’s heat shield is made of cork.
- The valves are being heated by a 15€ hairdryer.
- Every bit of technology in the project is open source – thus free for any company or person to use.
- Around 20 different sponsors are helping out with e.g. radar technology.
- Peter Madsen has helped design and construct three submarines, including Nautilus – the largest homemade submarine in the world.
- The floating launch platform will be towed into the Baltic Sea by the Nautilus submarine.
- Von Bengtson and Madsen have been updating their progress on The Something Awful Forum Cost of the project? Around 50.000 euros. Or the same price as a well-equipped mid-size car here in Denmark.
- The Copenhagen Suborbital HQ is situated on Refshaleøen in Copenhagen, only a few hundred meters in beeline from our office.

At this very moment, the Nautilus submarine, the launch platform and the HEAT 1X rocket are well on their way to the launch spot near the island of Bornholm. Follow this (Danish) blog for updates.

At Fourmation, we celebrate proactive people doing unexpected things and executing impossible projects. That’s why we pay our outmost respect to The Copenhagen Suborbital and the two Danish daredevils.

Sources: Wikipedia, Wired and Copenhagen Suborbitals

Take a few seconds to embrace that fact.

Through all of mankind’s history, we have told stories, shared knowledge, sought information and written down elements of everyday life, history and science. Today, it takes mankind only two days to produce just as much information as we did through all of history up to 2003. That is truly fascinating.

And how do we manage to produce all this information and content? Well, according to Eric Schmidt, it all comes down to user-generated content. And with more than 500 million Facebook profiles, millions of blogs, Twitter-accounts, YouTube profiles and the like, there’s a solid foundation for the creation of an abundance of information and content. On a side note, Google’s book cataloguing project, Google Books, have calculated that there’s around 129,864,880 books in the world.

The result of these incomprehensible amounts of data? Complexity. Just imagine the time spent on creating all this content, the massive quantity of servers making it possible – let alone the possibilities we have created for doing… well, everything whilst being online. And, not to forget, the challenges created for people, professionals and companies. That’s complexity.

These techniques are still very much in use. In the Western world, however, there is a tendency to consider these old-fashioned techniques as somewhat hippie-like and indeed very diverged from that of modern medicine studies and research. Fieldwork and product development within the medicine and pharmaceutical industry are mostly done in laboratories and involve highly skilled scientists, budgets and business plans. And though this is not necessarily a bad thing, there could perhaps be some valuable insights and possibilities out there in the nature?

An Australian weed field.

Australian pharmaceutical company Peplin (bought by Denmark-based Leo Pharma in December 2009) are currently working on the development of a new gel to treat Actinic Keratoses (AK), which is the most common pre-cancerous skin condition and caused by excessive sunbathing and use of solariums. And even if most pharmaceutical and medicine companies are constantly working on product development to ensure proper medicine for patients and steady revenue for the company, the story of Peplin’s work with the gel is extraordinary.

For years, Australian locals have used the white sap from a certain weed to cure warts, fight skin cancer and other face lesions. This plant, the Euphorbia Peplus or just Petty Spurge, is actually a common known weed, ruining gardens all over the world – including Denmark and Australia. It came to Peplin’s attention that the plant was worth a study. And the result: it turns out that the sap from the Petty Spurge is indeed very, very powerful and not just the result of a local wonder tale. Besides the gel to treat Actinic Keratoses, Peplin are now conducting heavy research into other products based on the Euphorbia Peplus.

PEP005 is the working title of the gel, which Peplin will launch in 2012 – to a market with a high level of potential: The direct costs for AK in the United States was $1.2 billion in 2004. 58 million people in the United States are living with AK, 11% to 25% of adults in the Northern hemisphere populations and 40% to 60% of adults in Australia have at least one AK lesion.

And the essence of this story? Besides the fact that Peplin’s gel will safe lives, it points towards the potential benefits of moving away from the office or the laboratory. When working with product development, design, manufacturing – in whatever business you are in – we need to realise that we cannot invent everything in the controlled, sterilized environment of our offices or laboratories. We need to get out into the nature, researching wonder tales, talk to people, listen to stories, local traditions and knowledge – in the very same way historic explorers embarked on adventurous scientific and exploratory expeditions.

(Sources: Peplin, Leo Pharma, Wikipedia and Medical News Today)

(Three of the most well-known Skunk Works-developed jet fighters: The F-35 Lightning II, the SR-71 Blackbird and the F-104 Starfighter).

In business, it is common use to leave the normal premises or offices when working with idea generation,  complex projects or conducting meetings. New surroundings can benefit your thoughts and work processes and can result in improved solutions. You may know this by the terms “process innovation”, “organisational innovation”, “organisational development” or similar, where key is to let go of the creative constraint. But the predecessor to these modern buzzwords was born in an allegedly foul-smelling factory floor in Burbank, California – hence the name, Skunk Works.

Skunk Works^©: “A term used in engineering and technical fields to describe a group within an organisation given a high degree of autonomy and unhampered by bureaucracy, tasked with working on advanced or secret projects.”

Today, the term is widely used in various businesses when describing agile development, production and innovation processes in offline and online environments. The Skunk Works term and story, however, is 67 years old:

In 1943, during the World War II, the allies were facing a rapidly growing German Jet threat. If the Germans would succeed in building a functioning fighter jet, they would gain a massive advantage over the Allies.
Well aware of this, the Air Tactical Service Command of the US Army Air Force, met with Lockheed Aircraft Corporation and expressed their need for a jet fighter. The Allied Forces had access to the British developed Goblin  jet engine, but the contemporary development and production time of new fighters meant that it could take years before a functional jet fighter would be ready.

A new approach was required.

Chief Research Engineer Clarence “Kelly” Johnson was the man for the job. In 1938, he had gathered a team of Lockheed-engineers who in secrecy, and in an isolated, walled-off building at the Lockheed-factory, had developed the world’s first 400 mph fighter – the P-38 Lightning.

Kelly assembled a similar team in June 1943 to begin the development of a jet fighter. Again, he separated the team from the rest of factory, and based on “Kelly’s 14 rules” the Skunk Works rules of operation was born.
Skunk Works was a team of highly skilled engineers, working closely together in a group based on massive autonomy and free of the normal production bureaucracy at the Lockheed Factory – ensuring an unprecedented short production time.

(The XP-80 prototype, aka. “Lulu Belle”, and the P-80 Shooting Star)

And the Skunk Works team proved their efficiency by designing and building the XP-80 prototype in only 143 days. Dubbed “Lulu Belle”, the XP-80 would later surface as the first-ever American jet fighter under the name of P-80 Shooting Star. The American jet fighter was born – and so was an all-new approach to rapid innovation and development.

And the meaning of all this? Today, much of the organisational- and process innovation seen in businesses, are centred around elements of the Skunk Works idea. The problem, however, is that bureaucracy and top-down management are often preventing the real Skunk Works-like development in taking place. This is where “Kelly’s 14 rules” can be applied. Though they originated in 1943, many of the rules are still considered valid today – even if they were invented around the creation of top-secret projects (three of the most interesting and still very much valid rules are listed below):

• 1. “The Skunk Works^® manager must be delegated practically complete control of his program in all aspects. He should report to a division president or higher.”
• 5. “There must be a minimum number of reports required, but important work must be recorded thoroughly.”
• 9. “The contractor must be delegated the authority to test his final product in flight. He can and must test it in the initial stages. If he doesn’t, he rapidly loses his competency to design other vehicles.”

Looking at these rules, it seems rather evident that they can be applied directly to many aspects of business life today. And why? Because the issues of dealing with complexity hasn’t changed. Working with complex projects, it is essential to establish a solid foundation or framework around the team. Within this framework, then, the team will have the time, resources and autonomy to succeed with their task(s). That is why “Kelly’s 14 rules” are still highly applicable to today’s business life.

At Fourmation, we are true believers in the “Skunk Works” approach when working with projects. But what do you think – and what techniques do you use in your company?

(Sources: Lockheedmartin.com and Wikipedia)