BizOp Blogs

Michigan Business Review – MLive.com: It’s always hunting season for the next great idea. The Edsel and the smartphone have vastly opposite records of success, but they both came from the same source: an idea. In their book “The Idea Hunter,” Andy Boynton and Bill Fischer observe... More

FreshBusinessThinking.com: Online social network for homeworkers Enterprise Nation is giving £100 to 100 businesses and would-be businesses for their “good ideas”. The competition, in association with PayPal, is asking its members how they’d spend the money on their ventures, awarding... More

Springwise: Lucky Seven makes custom caps that bear the logos of fictional companies featured in cult films and television shows. Founder Jay Jay Burridge is a self-proclaimed seventies kid, who spent much of his childhood wearing a Star Wars cap. Burridge, who is an artist by trade, founded the London-based... More

Many small businesses don’t have their own boardroom. Woo them with attractive facilities. Startup Costs: $50,000 – $100,000 About Franchises Available? No Online Operation? Yes Entrepreneur.com: Business Overview The increasing trend toward conducting business enterprises from a home office... More

Ethiopian: 1. Translator. In a multi-ethnic society such as the United State, translation service is in big demand. American Translators Association can be a good source of information on how to establish a home-based translation service. 2. Tutoring. You can start a business tutoring students by advertising... More

TrendHunter: US parents can now hire a private service to check if their teenagers are getting involved with drugs. Sniff Dogs offers a way of checking out drugs in private homes for the first time. The service is billed as discreet, as parents can not only conduct a search without their teenager’s... More

Unusual Business Ideas That Work: Renee Wood says she’s used to weeping at work. She runs an online bereavement-gift outfit, Comfort Co., from suburban Geneva and gets calls all day from people who want to buy something special for someone who has just lost a loved one. Compassion comes naturally... More

Springwise: When consumers celebrate special occasions, a little gravanity goes a long way and bigger tends to be better. 5starbaby‘s movie poster birth announcements, which we covered earlier this year, are one case in point, and recently one of our spotters hit upon another: poster-sized wedding... More

BusinessWeek: Can developing free software for mobile phones be a business? It can if you’re Illusion Labs, a fledgling company in the Swedish port city of Malmö. Illusion Labs was started a year ago by Carl Loodberg and Andreas Alptun, who had worked together at another Swedish company called... More

Associated Press: Seventeen-year-old Alexis Corocan spends about $5 a month on clothes, accessories and eyes of various shapes and shades for her online persona on IMVU, a popular Internet hangout. For 29 cents, for example, she can buy a set of deep gray eyes framed by dark lashes. Sixty cents gets... More

Bizcommunity.com: New product researcher Staff: One to start. Fee: R300 to R450 per hour, R7 000 to R10 000 per project, or a percentage of sales. Premises: Small office or home office. Qualifications: Technical experience, market knowledge, research and interviewing skills. Equipment: Scanner, copier,... More

Marketing Web: A special edition of Trendwatching.com‘s Trend Briefing lists 41 new business ideas, aimed to stimulate the imagination of entrepreneurial types. We’ve picked some of those that caught our eye, and could be popular in South Africa. Crowd Clout One trend that Trendwatching.com... More

CNNMoney.com: It was too weird to be true. In late 2006, a series of videos appeared on YouTube about a Willow Springs, Ill., resident named Kyle Bone who’d created a successful product called “the anti-shirt” – a shirt that exposed the area of one’s torso that a normal... More

Wall Street Journal Blogs: 1. Tap your own experiences. Stick with industries and topics you know and preferably have worked in. You’ll be best-positioned to spot great business opportunities and take advantage of them – and have a leg up on any competitors who don’t share your expertise. 2. Solve... More