Mel Ziegler is hardly ever wrong about the shape of things to come. After all, he founded and sold the Banana Republic and the Republic of Tea. So toward what activity would he point his instincts these days? "I'd do nothing," he says. "What this world needs more of is less. We need to focus on what's happening, what's here, what we are, what we have. We fail to pause and realize that doing nothing may be the right thing to do."
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From the Pioneers of Cyberspace
Howard Rheingold, information-superhighway chronicler: On-line publishing
Stephen Case, America Online Inc. founder: On-line programming
What Lotus 1-2-3 did for personal computers, what MTV did for cable, what Heather Locklear did for Melrose Place . . . somebody will do for the emerging world of interactive communications. That is, make it enormously popular.
"There will be plenty of opportunities for creating specialized on-line content," says Stephen Case. "It will have a transforming impact on the industry." Such new content, Case suggests, might be built around specific audiences -- for instance, those interested in personal finance -- or specialized transactions, like buying groceries.
Howard Rheingold, author of such books as The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier, sees similar possibilities in a specific sort of content: on-line publications. "They would offer low production costs, quick distribution, and irresistible novelty," he says.
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How to Come Up with Your Own Business Idea (Right Now)
Brian Lamb, C-SPAN founder: Bagels and coffee
Nolan Bushnell, Atari Inc. founder: Home robotics
Ivana Trump, former Mrs. Donald Trump: Luxury spa
Stanley Kaplan, educational-testing giant: College-entrance advice
Fred DeLuca, Subway Sandwiches & Salads founder: Long-distance phone service
Oh, come on, it's easy for these glib, high-profile businesspeople to respond to a question about what business they would start. They get asked this stuff all the time; besides, they order someone else to do any requisite original thinking.
Nevertheless, with the play-at-home version of our game, you too can appear as instantaneously insightful as you've ever dreamed. Just follow one of these simple -- yet rewarding -- techniques. And please remember, you only have to name an idea for a business, you don't actually have to start it.
1. Assume everybody has the same problem you do. For breakfast each morning, Brian Lamb gets a business idea. "I stand in a place over here at Union Station in Washington and get my morning bagel, and the guy will stand with his back to me for five minutes until a manager comes along and says, 'Wake up and smell the coffee," says Lamb. "I notice this time and time again, and my reaction is, 'If I wanted to get into something new, I would beat the pants off you by paying these people a little more, and then I would give them incentives.' There is a market there."
2. Name something you have already tried. Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari, gamely suggests that the "home robot" would be a nifty new business. "The technology is very difficult to drive to a low cost, but once it's there, it's going to be really fun," he says. In 1983 the selfsame Bushnell told Inc. that he foresaw a vast market for consumer robots by 1990.
3. Assume everybody has the same amount of money you do. Having endured great hardships since her split from the Donald, Ivana Trump knows what the average working stiff needs. He needs to "be pampered and spoiled, looked after and waited upon," she says. "I'd create the spa to end all spas, where people from around the world would come to leave all their stresses behind. I'd offer my guests the best of everything. The finest service. The most succulent low-calorie food ever created. My retreat would be paradise."
4. Name something you are (sort of) already doing. A quick quiz: when you hear the name Stanley Kaplan, what comes to mind? Preparing for those dreaded college-entrance exams, of course -- which has been the business of Stanley H. Kaplan Education Centers since 1938. Guess what opportunity grabs Kaplan these days? "The college-admissions process is becoming a lot more difficult, and I'd help students with it," he says. "I'd go into career advisement. There are students in high school who are not sure of the best college for them."
5. Follow the example of the proverbial "this guy." Like many an entrepreneur, Fred DeLuca knows this guy -- no names, please -- who has struck it big in a "very simple" business in which "you don't have to be a technological genius." Thanks to such irrefutable testimony, DeLuca knows exactly what his next venture would be: reselling long-distance services. "Basically, you buy a phone switch, and you make some government filings, and then you make contracts with services like MCI and Sprint," explains DeLuca. "Then the only thing you have to deal with is getting customers." DeLuca says he would do that by targeting specific immigrant groups -- such as the Chinese -- and hiring Chinese-speaking telemarketers to offer them discounts on calls to home.
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Research assistance provided by Christopher Caggiano, John Dobosz, and Elizabeth McCullough.
WHAT THE (INVESTMENT) EXPERTS SAY
Whose ideas should you invest in if you could? We asked our panel of esteemed venture capitalists to tell us
Granted, the business ideas in these pages are hardly ready for early-stage investment, but we asked six well-known venture capitalists to ruthlessly pick or pan them anyway. In the spirit of good clean fun, of course.
