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The Next Big Thing? Home Improvement
Henry Bloch, H&R Block Inc. founder: Home-repair service
Anne Robinson, Windham Hill Records founder: "Lifestyle support" service
It sounds like the premise of a feeble sitcom: one's New Age, one's old school -- but they live under the same roof.
Well, based on their business ideas, it certainly sounds as if Henry Bloch and Anne Robinson live in similar houses.
Bloch, 72, sees a need for an all-purpose house-repair business, which would handle painting, plumbing, electrical work, and so forth. "Today there are so many people who don't have time to repair things because they are always working," he says. "The business could be organized around a team, in which a number of industry-specific specialists come in together or where a few multiskilled workers perform the majority of the labor. This would be the basis of a business I would start if I didn't have a great deal of capital."
Robinson agrees that because of the increase in households with two wage-earners, "people need a service that can make the home more palatable." Besides maintenance, her "lifestyle support" business would include services like pet care, food delivery, and security.
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All Politics Is Vocal
Rudolph W. Giuliani, current New York City mayor: Opera company
Edward I. Koch, former New York City mayor: Low-fat restaurants
New York City mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani has built his reputation as a tough-on-crime conservative, but he has his libretto side as well. "One of my dreams is to launch an opera company," he admits. "We're one of the few cities that support two major opera companies. Both of them are doing quite well -- and it's possible another opera company would do well, too."
A partisan of traditional opera, Giuliani sees growing consumer interest in such music. "One of the top-selling classical records right now is a Gregorian chant," he points out, and The Three Tenors in Concert 1994, a PBS special and recording, has also proved astoundingly popular. "There's room for growth," he says.
But not every kind of growth is unlimited, notes the garrulous Edward I. Koch, a predecessor of Giuliani's in the mayor's office. "The business I would go into would be a chain of restaurants that would provide as near to fat-free gourmet menus as it is possible to do, with takeout as well," says Koch, now an all-purpose commentator for radio and TV as well as in books and newspapers. "We would scour the recipes and menus worldwide to have truly good-tasting food with minimal fat content. It would be called Ed Koch's Fat-Free Factory."
Naturally, the location of such an eatery would be key. And Giuliani has a proposal regarding that aspect. "Maybe he could put it next to my opera house," Giuliani says. "As long as he has a tasteful sign."
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Promotion? No Thanks. I'll Lose My Window
Jack Kahl, Manco Inc. founder: Office redesign
Jack Kahl's business would be designing buildings that foster communication. His secret? "You do not put executives in the corner office because that's the good view," says the founder of Manco, best known as a maker of duct tape. "You save the best views for the secretaries; they are there the most, while executives are running around the world. Let the sun shine on them."
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Help! (Instructions Not Included)
Donald Keough, former Coca-Cola Co. president: Service for home electronics
Edith Weiner, futurist: Personal-entertainment consulting
B. Thomas Golisano, Paychex Inc. founder: Electronic bill-paying service
Philip B. Crosby, quality czar: Human bill-paying service
Michael Hammer, reengineering expert: Providing information to help consumers understand changing industries
Nobody needs to tell you how to program a VCR or get on-line via personal computer. We know that. You're too suave, too intelligent, too self-reliant. In other words, you're no dummy: you gave up trying years ago.
But facing the threat of a new generation of electronic gear that demands you interact with it, you will probably feel obliged to at least make a gesture toward having some sort of relationship. When you do, it's likely that someone will be there to help -- and to profit. "The hard reality," reasons Donald Keough, 67, former president of Coca-Cola Co., "is that people are just sort of illiterate when it comes to electronic equipment, and I am a member of that fraternity."
That may help explain why Keough insists there's a pretty good business in dispatching humans to homes to help just plain folks understand their plain-paper fax machines or learn to love their laptops. "More and more information is flowing into the home, and I don't think there is a lot of thinking about how all that equipment is going to be serviced," he says.
Once you've got that interactive TV juiced up, though, how on earth do you tame it to do your bidding? Well, in Edith Weiner's vision of the coming 500-channel world, you would hire a company to map out your entertainment menu week by week. Weiner, the forward-looking president of New York CityÑbased consulting firm Weiner, Edrich, Brown Inc., says that such a "personal-entertainment programmer" would pick up on your preferences by conducting a "very extensive personal interview" twice a year. "Every week I'd give clients their first three hours, their next two hours, and so on, depending on how much leisure time they had that week," Weiner says. "I'd program what you read, listen to, watch, and even go to. I'd really get to know somebody and what they are like."
