Best Business Ideas in the World

The August issue of Business 2.0 magazine focuses on what it calls the "29 best business ideas in the world." While I expected a single article focusing on the topic, the magazine interspersed the lessons in all their articles. For example, idea #1 can be found in their Editor's Letter while the others are in various articles in the issue. Plus, I was thinking "business ideas" in the vein of the hottest businesses to start only to find nuggets of business wisdom that worked in the recent past.

Some of these ideas may be over-the-top for home business entrepreneurs (e.g. offshoring to Latin America, invest in regions not countries, etc.), so I included only those that may be relevant to a small business operation. Nonetheless, this is a great collection of business nuggets that are worth pondering upon:

1. Scour the planet for the best ideas and adapt them to your local market
2. Apply the idea behind eBay to other businesses
3. Target local markets with culture-specific goods
4. Use edgy technology to cut through clutter.
5. Launch a startup with government funding (you must be part of a special interest group or your business idea is so cutting edge)
6. Tweak a commodity product to target a unique niche
7. Bone up on biology to master the science of selling
8. Differentiate - at all costs
9. Look out the window for inspiration.
10. Create growth by launching spinoffs, not just products.
11. Find the customers who need you most - and give them what they want.
12. Get people to spend more by making them think they're spending less.
13. Sell services to remote offices of global corporations
14. Get a job with a multinational to spot startup opportunities
15. Cash in on American cachet by making yourself a celebrity
16. Be one thing to all people: cheap
17. Use your model where it makes sense; partner where it doesn't
18. Refine new ideas via small trials before launching full rollouts
19. Find profitable alternative uses for low-rent real estate
20. Find ways to sidestep industry middlemen.
21. Lower prices enough to tap into latent mass-market demand
22. Demand more for less.
23. Make a free product so good that customers will pay