From Possible to Profitable

By Joel Stonington

The most successful entrepreneurs are those who don't follow the herd but anticipate the
needs of the market earlier than the competition. Of course, such anticipation is not without
risk, but the payout can be considerable. After all, seminal inventions, such as the
automobile, the Internet, and the smartphone, were all regarded with high degrees of
skepticism when first introduced. Equally important, the impact is not only cultural but
economic as well. The automobile gave rise to a global network of small businesses, such as
parts makers, dealerships, and service centers. The Internet has spawned a host of online
companies, many of which, such as Amazon.com and eBay.com, have grown from small
operations to very large ones indeed. So what are the small businesses of the future, and
where will we find them? The fields of energy and cleantech seem to be among the ripest
areas for growth, as do nanotechnology, entertainment, and the growing demands of
adapting the planet to accommodate its burgeoning population--even if they might strike
some of us now as being a bit far-fetched. In forming the jobs and businesses that might
arise out of necessity, pleasure seeking, and technology, we generally followed the first of
the late British author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke's three "laws" of prediction, which goes
as follows: "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he
is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is probably
wrong."

Fabricating items in low-cost printers, Plenty of hype but 3D printers are still
extremely expensive : Need a new lens cap? Print it up. That's the way of the future.
Instead of fabricating in a factory and shipping the item wherever it's needed, 3D printers
are expected to produce everything from architect models to sinks to spare camera parts.
"It's already happening at service bureaus," says Jackie Fenn, an analyst at Gartner. "It
hasn't happened at a physical shop like Kinko's, but I think it's very possible."

It's time to exploit space, Slightly beyond sci-fi : Since resources are running out here
on Earth, the value of rare metals and minerals may someday be worth the cost of lunar or
asteroid mining, especially when you consider that deep sea drilling requires investments of
billions of dollars. "It's an area of personal passion," says Peter Diamandis, commercial
space pioneer and founder of the X PRIZE Foundation. "If you realize that everything we hold
of value on earth is in near-infinite quantities in space, you realize there will be vast wealth
created on the space frontier." Diamandis is not concerned with the difficulties inherent in
mining an asteroid; he's already convinced it's possible and lucrative. "It's really about
taking the steps and clarifying the regulatory structure of who owns these resources."

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Use degrading polymers and stem cells to engineer tissue, Early uses and
testing : This is not about growing a foot or an arm in a lab. It's about growing skin or
tendon or muscle--in other words, single types of tissue. But the possibilities are immense.
For instance, Soft Tissue Regeneration is a Connecticut company working to heal ACL tears
without taking tendon from another part of the body to surgically repair it. The company
uses a degrading polymer placed where a tear occurred and lets stem cells in the blood do
the healing. "We use a device that looks like a high-tech shoelace," says Joseph Reilly,
president and chief executive of Soft Tissue Regeneration. "It's braided. It looks like about a
5-inch shoelace from your sneaker made from very small fibers, like smaller than a human
hair. After about 12 months it absorbs into the body, and you're left with a regrown ACL."
The device is still years of clinical trials from market, but the idea is being tested by
numerous companies for myriad applications. It's the oldest approach to healing: Let nature
do what nature does best.

Ubiquitous natural resource as product, Still in the realm of Spaceballs : If water

can be bottled and sold, why not air? In 2009, bottled water was a $10.6 billion business that
involved packaging 8.1 billion gallons in the U.S., according to Beverage Marketing Corp. in
New York. But air is somewhat easier to find than a cold sip of water. Still, oxygen bars went
through a mildly popular phase in the '90s, and seven or eight companies still market
oxygen canisters to the action sports set. "It's pure oxygen," says Daniel Jungers, managing
partner of Big Ox, a company in Springfield, Mo. "It increases the oxygen content in your
blood and gives you a boost when you're tired or fatigued." Thus far there are no plans for
pure mountain air in bottles, unless you're talking pure irony. A Hong Kong activist group
protesting air quality in the city--reportedly three times as bad as New York City air--posted
a video selling canned fresh air that instantly went viral this year.

Electric vehicles hitting the U.S. market, Hundreds of charging stations have been
built, thousands to go : The all-electric Nissan Leaf completely sold out before the car
even arrived in U.S. showrooms, according to Agence France-Presse. With that kind of
demand, the charging stations to get those cars running are also going to be in high
demand. "Our mission is to insure that people don't hesitate to buy electric because they're
worried about fueling," says Richard Lowenthal, CEO of Coulomb Technologies, a Campbell
(Calif.) company that builds charging stations. "The key is that they fuel a little differently."
In general, the cars take hours to charge, so stations are needed where cars are parked.
Although garages are often referred to as the perfect place, Lowenthal says there are better
spots. "In the U.S. there are 250 million cars and only 50 million garages. We're busy putting
them elsewhere, like the workplace."

Reading DNA gives clues to disease, DNA reveals some diseases, much more to
come : In May, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration put the whammy on a genetics
company, San Diego's Pathway Genomics, which was trying to put DNA testing kits on
shelves at Walgreens. The company pulled the kits. But testing DNA for patterns that
correlate with diseases won't disappear so easily. BioNanomatrix, a Philadelphia company
that provides technology solutions for reading DNA, is working on a grant to get DNA
sequencing under $100 by 2015. The long-term possibilities of cheap DNA testing, says
Edward Erickson, BioNanomatrix's president and CEO, involve a better understanding of
aging and endless possibilities for new ways to cure and treat disease. "The great dream is
that you take a person's DNA when they are a baby and you profile it in a very thorough
way," Erickson said. "You say look, this baby is healthy in most ways, but this baby's DNA

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shows us the baby is at extreme risk." In one example, if the risk were for heart disease,
therapies could start at a young age rather than waiting decades before early symptoms
show up. "We are already capable of looking at the total amount of DNA that one sees in the
human genome."

Private companies audit polluters, Dependent on policy : Doing a greenhouse gas

audit is endlessly complicated, because so much of our daily lives, from heating to
transportation to food, involve contributing to climate change. As policy shifts to stop
impending environmental degradation, the jobs will follow. Michael Gillenwater is an expert
in greenhouse gas measurement and co-founder of the Greenhouse Gas Management
Institute. "There are going to be a more roles related to greenhouse gas management," he
says. "Auditors are one role that a lot of people focused on initially. It has been the most
clearly defined role in these early days of carbon markets. But there will be a whole
population of carbon specialists." In the end, the objective is to make the information that
has been collected useful. And that depends in large part on policy. "It will have to develop,"
says Gillenwater, "assuming we take the problem of [climate change] seriously and start to
implement policy to mitigate it."

Beyond 3D, Princess Leia has arrived : The hologram of today is a clever version of an
old illusion called Pepper's Ghost. In the mid-19th century, the trick was done with thick
glass between the audience and image that could make a figure appear to be floating in the
air. Current illusionists use highly reflective polymer, invisible to the audience, to create life-
size images. "People walk into the room and say, 'now that's a hologram,'" says Ian
O'Connell, director of Musion Systems in London. A top application for the technology is
using holograms for real-time telepresence for meetings. The capacity already exists for
numerous people in different cities to appear on stage on another continent, in real time. Of
course, hologram theaters could replace 3D, as well. In Las Vegas this summer, Musion
provided the technology for the first U.S. nightclub with holographic entertainment. That
way they can go from comedy to mariachi with the push of a button.

Personal flight, Finally, commercially available : A New Zealand company, Martin

Aircraft, is taking orders for the first commercially available jetpack. It's recreational, so
you'd need to go fly in a field somewhere, rather than to work. It's also expensive, with the
Martin website stating a price of $100,000. If that price comes down, however, it's not hard
to imagine that folks might want to fly to work instead of drive. That is, until air traffic looks
like the freeways of today.

Pay-to-play lunar travel , Lunar mission in the next few years : "Accessing space
used to only be the province of governments or large aerospace giants," says commercial
space pioneer Peter Diamandis. That is no longer the case, with numerous companies
sending paying customers into the heavens. That may go a step further, with lunar missions,
in the next five or 10 years. Ever since Eugene Cernan stepped off the moon on Dec. 14,
1972, the moon has been devoid of human contact. The next person to return may well pay
for the right to do so. Diamandis is co-founder of Space Adventures, a company planning a
lunar mission for tourists in the next three to four years. The expected mission has two
seats. Price: $100 million each.

Legalization of drugs, Still officially black market : California's legalization measure

didn't pass on Nov. 2, but California and a number of other states are already well into a

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gray area of legalization. Further, legalization advocates say the vote itself was as step
forward. "It elevated and legitimized the discourse about marijuana legalization like nothing
ever had before," says Ethan Nadelmann, director of the Drug Policy Alliance Network in
New York. "It shifted the debate from whether marijuana should be legalized to how." For
the small pot farmers and joint rollers, business is good, and few are looking forward to the
Phillip Morris of weed. That doesn't stop the push for legalization. Nadelmann says it will
happen with states first. "When will we see a repeal of the federal prohibition? It's impossible
to say."

Grow meat in a lab, The tech works but the taste may be off : Using techniques that
come out of stem cell technology, numerous groups of scientists have grown meat in the
lab. Stem cells are placed on scaffolding and soaked in nutrients to grow. People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are behind the push for lab meat. In 2008, the group
offered a $1 million prize to the first group that can grow commercially viable amounts of
chicken meat in a lab. New Harvest is a nonprofit founded by Jason Matheny in 2004 to do
just that. In May he told Bloomberg Businessweek, "It's a way to satisfy the growing global
demand for meat in a way that's healthier, more energy efficient, and sustainable."
SeeBloomberg Businessweek's profile of New Harvest founder Jason Matheny.

Use nanotechnology to repair cells, Very small and very, very small : A report
commissioned by the British Government earlier this year, "The Shape of Jobs to Come,"
flubbed in suggesting that nanotechnology would lead to subatomic medical treatments and
hence, nanomedics. We're on board with nanotechnology providing advances in medicine,
but this was a problem of size. Bruce Donald, a computer science professor at Duke
University, has been creating microrobots that could possibly insert electrons into neurons in
the brain. The world's smallest untethered, controllable robots, Donald's nanobots are about
60 microns wide (200 could fit on an M&M). It's not hard to imagine medical applications for
the robots. But subatomic is a whole different scale. An atom is just a few femtometers
across. That's less than one billionth the size of the robots. Hence, femtomedics aren't going
to be making an appearance soon.

Smaller is better, Getting cheaper all the time : As satellites get smaller, the costs of
launching them get lower. That's the major limiting factor. Nanosatellites and the even-
smaller picosatellites can be packed with all sorts of useful equipment that have business
applications. "The types of nanosatellites and microsatellites that can be built by small
companies and universities will become more robust," says Peter H. Diamandis, a pioneer in
the field of commerical space flight. "We're heading in a direction where small teams and
small companies will be able to do far more in smaller packages."

Your private info at risk, The need for data protection and reputation
management growing rapidly : From credit-card numbers to photos from the latest
kegger, more private information is online than ever before. Businesses need to protect that
information, and individuals need to be careful with it. Mike Spinney, a privacy expert in
Townsend, Mass., says states are only now beginning to pass laws that require companies to
have written security plans to prevent data breach. Beyond data, a cottage industry is
developing in the field of reputation management. "The bad things we do online can be seen
by just about anybody," says Spinney. "The good things you do online can be your social

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media résumé, as it were. But you don't want an impertinent comment on Facebook to be
the difference between landing, or not landing, a job."

Personal robotics expected to expand, Vacuuming floors but not doing dishes :
Thousands of robots have been blown up or damaged by improvised explosive devices in
Iraq and Afghanistan. So robot mechanics already exist. But we're talking about something
as ubiquitous as a computer repair shop. The world robot population is growing rapidly, with
an estimated 13 million robots by the end of next year, according to IFR World Robotics.
Many are industrial robots, but personal robotics is growing rapidly, with research robots
doing dishes and ironing. "People have play dates with their Roombas," says Ryan Cato,
director of the Consumer Privacy Project at Stanford University's Center for Internet and
Society. "Soldiers risk their lives trying to save bots on the battlefields. It will accelerate
massively."

Space tourism, Only for the very, very rich : "The punchline is that we are now seeing
the birth of the Googles and Apples of the space business," says Peter H. Diamandis, a
pioneer in the commercial space industry. "There are a number of companies working on
space hotels." At the forefront is Bigelow Aerospace, which launched two prototypes of
space hotels and currently plans a commercial space complex by 2014. Called Sundancer,
the hotel is expected to have space for up to six people on a short-term basis. A Russian
company called Orbital Technologies is also racing to have the first commercial space
station. A vision of the station is in the photo above.

Healing with cells moves medicine away from drugs : Stem cells are already used to
model diseases and test new drugs, but as the technology advances, stems cells may
actually push drugs aside. Even now, stem cells are showing promise for degenerative
diseases and regrowing cells after surgeries. Pharmacies full of drugs, however, could well
be replaced with pharmacies of cells that are more natural and work better. "Using stem
cells will shift medical practice away from the pharmaceutical or chemical approach," says
Robert Margolin, associate director of the Genetics Police Institute. "This is the first time
we're actually using living cells to help treat or mitigate disease."

Local food in growing cities : Single-story, high-tech greenhouses save significant

amounts of water and increase productivity. So why not stack them up and makes cities
self-sufficient? The idea for vertical farms came from an infectious disease ecologist,
Dickson Despommier, who turned his knowledge of parasites into a way of looking at cities.
"Instead of the city behaving like a parasite, it should be a symbiant," Despommier says.
"The future city has to take a big lesson from nature and start behaving like an ecosystem."
By that, he means zero-waste cities: Even the idea of waste is anathema to a working
ecosystem. So Despommier envisions skyscrapers of the future producing the majority of
food consumed by citizens, with brown water and food compost used for farming. "City life,"
says Despommier, "demands city food."

Bottled water already a billion-dollar business : It has been said that water is the oil of
the 21st century. But humans don't need to drink a liter or two of oil every day. Early signs
of coming conflicts over water are already apparent around the world and in the U.S., where
the Southwest is ever-thirsty. Dickson Despommier, a professor of microbiology at Columbia
University, says water issues are a coming tidal wave, especially considering the amount of

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water needed for agriculture. "People will actually make a choice: I could drink this water, or
I could let my plants drink this water," Despommier says. "It's going to be the subject of
conflicts and wars."