Small Businesses to Make Big Splash in 2007?

By Jennifer Hopfinger
December 21, 2006 02:28 PM

Fortune Small Business magazine's December cover story, "The Next Little Thing," offers a preview of 10 ideas coming from small businesses that could make big news in 2007.

"When a new product from Microsoft debuts, it doesn't arrive quietly. Instead it gets tracked through the R&D pipeline by trade magazines, bloggers, and carefully controlled announcements from the marketing department. Small-business innovations don't work that way," the magazine writes. "They tiptoe into the market, heralded by minimal PR (if any) and propelled instead by the inventor's enthusiasm. What makes that more ironic is that small businesses these days come up with better ideas more consistently than their corporate competitors."

Some are ideas to save the world, some just aim to make the world a prettier place, and some hope to make people prettier. Among the magazine's top picks:

*Ocean Power Technologies is working to generate electricity from wave power. The company hopes to light up the West Coast -- starting with an experimental project in Oregon -- by harnessing the massive, ceaseless motion of the sea. Their buoys can transmit electricity to land via undersea cables without harming marine life or contributing to global warming -- and at prices comparable to coal energy.

*Organic Bouquet is introducing six-foot-long roses to the U.S. market in 2007. The blossoms open to almost four inches wide -- twice the industry norm -- have a higher petal count and a longer vase life. They're not engineered to be that big -- under the right conditions, some varieties will simply grow that way. Of course, supersized roses don't come cheap -- about $21 a stem, or $250 a dozen, including shipping -- because they take two to three times as long to grow and require a huge box.

*Freedom-2, co-founded by a Harvard dermatology professor who pioneered non-scarring laser treatments for blemishes, has designed tattoo ink using FDA-approved, digestible pigment particles. Best of all, it's easily removable with a simple treatment that's much cheaper than conventional tattoo removal.

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Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism