The Rise of the Jetpack
In August 2008, Troy Widgery's morning commute will get a lot more scenic. Instead of driving the five miles from Cherry Creek, Colo., to his office in downtown Denver, he'll fly it, wearing a crash helmet and a jetpack strapped to his back.
Widgery's company, JetPack International, has spent the past two years developing a device that fulfills those Jetsons-era fantasies - and can keep you airborne for all of nine minutes. READ MORE
Coming soon: Your personal electric-use tracker
Adrian Tuck wants to help America change the way it shops for energy. If the power companies ran grocery stores, he says, "you would walk down the aisle and there would be no prices on anything. You'd fill your cart, get home, and 45 days later you'd get a bill that had one single number on it."
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Puree a rake for fun and profit
George Wright figured a construction project was underway when he noticed wood shavings inside a room his company used for customer demonstrations.
The marketing manager at Blendtec, based in Orem, Utah, he had been onboard for only a year. But he was fairly sure that his brand of food blenders was not packed in sawdust. When Wright, 41, asked his colleagues, they told him the shavings came from one of the CEO's product tests. This time he had jammed a two-by-two board into a blender on full speed. That evoked images in Wright's head not of his CEO in a padded cell - but of his CEO in an Internet video. READ MORE
Tweeting for profit
Call this the year business invaded Twitter. The service -- which can be used on any cell phone or computer -- has been a hit almost since its inception, with celebrities as diverse as Richard Branson and Britney Spears using it to tout their appearances and correspond with fans. But in the past year, @Comcast has set up what has effectively become a help desk on Twitter, while @JetBlue (JBLU), @Zappos, @WholeFoods (WFMI, Fortune 500) and @Starbucks (SBUX, Fortune 500) interact with hundreds of thousands of their followers. READ MORE
Wind energy startups chase mile-high power
If you want to see the future of wind energy, look up.
The higher you go, the stronger and steadier the wind becomes - and the more power you can reap from it.
That's why Ottawa-based Magenn Power is building an airship to generate energy from high-altitude wind. CEO Pierre Rivard's helium-filled rotating blimps will hover at up to 1,000 feet - conventional turbines remain suspended at 300 feet - and use fabric sails that transmit energy to the ground via high-voltage cable tethers. The result: A single blimp can power up to five homes. READ MORE
Behind Coors' color-changing beer cans
As an undergraduate at Cornell University, Lyle Small annoyed his housemates by spending days on end painting their Ping-Pong table in rainbow shades of ink. He brewed chemicals to create inks that changed hue when exposed to light and heat.
"I got obsessed," says Small, now 41. "I thought all printing inks should change color."
Two decades later his passion is paying dividends. Small's Colorado Springs company, Chromatic Technologies Inc.(CTI), is booming while rivals in the ink industry are cutting back. Music distributors, foodmakers and the beer giant MillerCoors are using Small's color-changing ink to make their packaging stand out. CTI landed 120 new customers in 2008. Small expects sales to double this year, to $10 million. READ MORE
From beer sludge to fish flakes
Andrew Logan has what every manufacturer craves: an endless source of free raw materials that his suppliers can't wait to dump and a market starving for his product.
Logan, a biologist in Idaho Springs, Colo., turns waste from breweries into a fish-food ingredient. His company, Oberon FMR, spent a decade refining a proprietary mixture of microbes trained to eat food-based wastewater. When dried, the bacteria become high-protein flakes for the booming $100 billion aquaculture industry. READ MORE
A cheaper way to scan for cancer
A conversation in a hotel lobby led to a cancer detection breakthrough. READ MORE
The new way to meet payroll
A host of online services can help business owners save money, make fewer mistakes and concentrate on more important stuff. READ MORE
Boost sales with online appointment bookings
Like many business owners who rely on client bookings, London Elise used to check her voice-mail obsessively. She couldn't afford to miss requests for appointments at her San Francisco skin-care studio, Soothe Spa. So Elise, 35, spent much of her day playing phone tag with customers, trying to nail down times that worked for all concerned.
That changed when she began using software that lets customers make their own appointments on her website. Now she glances at text messages on her cellphone to see who has booked a facial or a massage, and she can manage her schedule from home.
"It fundamentally changed the landscape of my business," says Elise. READ MORE
Where's the cable guy? Track him and see
One day in 2001, Yuval Brisker was stuck at home, expecting a cable TV technician to arrive for a service call. First he waited. Then he waited some more. Brisker reflected that people all over the world were stuck in the same position, wasting hours without knowing when -- or even if -- a service person would show up. READ MORE
GPS phones help monitor staff
Small business owners can shave payroll and logistics costs with new, low-cost tracking tools. READ MORE
Being Big Brother
Ryan Elmore used to trust that his employees were hard at work after he left his neighborhood restaurant in Erie, Colo. Then, 18 months ago, he decided to spy on them. READ MORE
Steal your own identity
New software sniffs out personal information before hackers can get to it. READ MORE
How to innovate: A step-by-step guide
It has never been easier or cheaper to alter the direction of a business, and companies that don't evolve in response to changing market conditions may not survive at all.
"In an economic downturn, innovation isn't your best friend," says Jeff DeGraff, director of the Innovatrium Institute for Innovation at the University of Michigan. "It's your only friend."
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