For thousands of years, ingenious minds have grappled with the world’s conundrums, desperate for the solutions capable of making a tangible difference to the way we live and work.
50 Best Business Ideas celebrates the greatest business ideas of the past 50 years. In the past half-century alone, some highly influential ideas and innovations have emerged that have had a profound impact on business and society. Why the last 50 years? As a period, it rivals the industrial revolution for economic advancement. The ‘computer age’ has enabled instant access to information and knowledge. The processes of miniaturisation and digitisation have made advanced technology more portable. And globalisation and commoditisation have dramatically enhanced the commercial potential of any market innovation.
Each of the ideas has been undeniably transformative. Many remain core to our daily existence: the PC, the internet, satellite TV and barcodes, to name a few. Some are controversial: the disposable nappy, the contraceptive pill, aerosol deodorant and plastic bags have had an enormous impact, irrespective of the negative press they have received. And there are ideas that have declined in influence already: such as the fax machine, the Post-it note, the Walkman and the pocket calculator, which were outmoded by digitised versions, but nevertheless critical as evolutionary landmarks.
In identifying and acclaiming the individuals and companies that changed the world, we offer a nod to the incredible foresight of the people who had the germ of an idea and set the ball rolling.
There are some fantastic stories contained within this book, some of which you may have heard of, but also many that will surprise and enthral, if only for the way such major contributions to the world came about through happenstance. For example, the inventions of Kevlar, smoke alarms, microwave ovens and the Post-it note, as we know them now, had an element of serendipity about them, only happening because scientific experiments went wrong. Kevlar, the polymer used in body armour and innumerable other applications for its impervious qualities, was stumbled upon when scientist Stephanie Kwolek of DuPont decided not to throw away the cloudy, runny substance and instead spun it into a fibre to see what happened. It turned out this fibre was stronger than any other previously created – and one now responsible for a multi-billion dollar income for licensor DuPont each year.
Likewise, the smoke alarm was created when a detector for poisonous gases failed to produce the desired response. When Swiss physicist Walter Jaeger decided to take a cigarette break from his toils, he noticed the smoke had triggered the sensors. While it wasn’t he who went on to create the domestic smoke alarm we know today, the timeframe for a commercially viable version would surely have been more prolonged without his discovery. And the Post-it note was ultimately arrived at after Dr Spencer Silver’s adhesive failed to bond fully with other surfaces. When colleague Art Fry used the weak glue to stick small pieces of paper as temporary bookmarks in his hymn book, the Post-it note was effectively born.
The idea for a ring pull on food and drink cans emerged from the mind of Ermal Fraze when he forgot his beer can opener while having a picnic in 1959. It took him a few years and some effort, but when the ‘pull-tab’ launched (or ‘snap top’ as it was known then) it was an instant success, and has had a fundamental impact on the consumption of food and drink the world over. Another food-related invention, the microwave oven, only transpired because of a partially melted chocolate and peanut bar. Dr Percy Spencer of defence contractor Raytheon stood next to a magnetron system during testing in 1944 and found that his snack bar had inadvertently been heated by the experiment. The company patented the idea for the use of microwaves in the cooking process in 1945 and invented an unwieldy oven some years later. It wasn’t until 1965 that a worthy product was created for domestic use, however.
Regarding the invention of fibre optics, it’s telling that the first presentation suggesting light could be used as a transmission medium was laughed at by professional engineers. It didn’t stop (now Sir) Charles Kao from pursuing such an unlikely dream. Showing similar perseverance, VHS only came to market when it did because two employees at JVC carried on working on a de-prioritised project. And most of us have heard about (now Sir) James Dyson’s 5,000+ prototypes prior to the launch of his Dual Cyclone vacuum cleaner.
For those who enjoy tales of conflict, there’s the story of the three scientific teams who went to war over who had the right to proclaim themselves the inventor of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), and there’s the German-Brazilian Andreas Pavel who fought Sony for 20 years for the right to be known as the inventor of a Walkman-like device, a battle the Japanese conglomerate settled out of court. Pavel ran up a $3.6m legal bill and came close to bankruptcy for the recognition he felt he deserved. You’ll undoubtedly find intrigue, inspiration and considerable amounts of information in each of the stories.
Our final 50 is without parallel. We employed influential minds from the fields of academia, business and finance, who provided valuable input and discussed the project at length. We have identified truly seminal moments rather than pre-cursors that had limited commercial impact. So, while early forms of the fax machine were operational in the 1920s and attempts were made to create a smoke alarm in the 1890s, we decided to include them because these were not the break-through moments, the catalysts or game-changers in their own right.
In most cases, examples like this didn’t reach far beyond the garden shed or laboratory. The feverish minds that contemplated their creation’s impact on the world so often succumbed to time’s relentless march and an inability to deliver something the rest of the planet appreciated. So, before every good home or office could benefit from their wild imaginations, the baton was passed to others, culminating through iterative innovations in what we see and use today.
There are subjective choices for which we offer no apology. We know the Pill celebrated its 50th birthday last year, but crucially it was not marketed as a contraceptive until a year hence. There are others, too, that some might argue pre-existed our cut-off. But look for the evidence that society had embraced the concepts, that money was flowing into the coffers of the trailblazers, and you’ll find very little. They don’t pass the commercial viability test that we applied and outline in each chapter.
As with the vacuum cleaner, it’s not always the inventor that warrants all the credit; it’s often the innovators that come later and make a material difference to the early concept. By tweaking, deconstructing and reconstructing, by testing and tampering, these people and companies revolutionised things that were, at best, satisfactory. That is why this book recognises specific ground-breakers, such as the Walkman, the Dyson and Google’s ‘20% innovation time’, alongside ideas exploited simultaneously by a multitude of leading players.
Conversely, we acknowledge key moments that took place years, even decades, before the product’s commercial explosion. The internet is a good example of this: although millions now credit Sir Tim Berners-Lee as the ‘father of the web’ for his scientific work in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the decisive moment happened much earlier when ARPANET, a computer network created for the use of the Pentagon in the US during the 1960s, was first deployed. Without Berners-Lee’s World Wide Web and his gift of hypertext mark-up language (HTML), ARPANET would not have made billions for the founders of Google and Facebook or the pocket change users of eBay enjoy; but his invention required the backbone of ARPANET to have true significance.
There are lists within lists, such as ideas that arguably made the world more secure (smoke alarms, Kevlar, biometrics and remote keyless entry systems); more fun (the MP3 player, the computer game, satellite TV and VHS); more efficient (the barcode, the spreadsheet, the fax machine, video conferencing, email, fibre optics, computer-aided design (CAD), the PC, pocket calculators, Just-in-Time inventory management, electronic point of sale technology, smartphones, tablet computers, pay-by-swipe technology, search engines, GPS and ATMs); more consumer-friendly (the ring pull, e-readers, the Dyson, touch-tone phones, infrared remote controls, digital cameras, the compact disc and microwave ovens); made business unusual (the 20-70-10 rule, Google’s 20% innovation time, and pay-per-click advertising); and more equal (Equal Opportunities policy and budget airlines).
Inevitably, there are some that ostensibly don’t fall into any of the above categories, such as the hybrid car, and many that you could argue fall into multiple pots. And there were also those that missed the cut; ones that would have laid strong claim to being as important as any we actually selected. The microchip (also known as the integrated circuit) is only just the wrong side of 50, as is the laser (the first functioning laser was operated in 1960, much to our chagrin).
Ultimately, it’s a unique and fascinating read. Contained within these pages are the definitive stories of the ideas that shaped the last half-century. The pre-cursors, personalities, patents, prototypes, prolonged legal battles, and lucrative proceeds of the blood, sweat and tears that have gone into each and every idea, are all in here.
This book puts its head above the parapet and so our 50 is designed to be debated long and hard, and we welcome such discourse. Enjoy.