Imaginative Business Ideas

I have previously written about the Ideas Database from Springwise. It features many new business ideas from around the world … and I am always fascinated at the ingenuity of people!

Here are some the great new business ideas that caught my eye recently.

A few days ago I wrote a blog entry about exercising your brain which was prompted by my wife bringing home a book of logic Puzzles! Well a new business concept around Brain Gyms for Boomers has started in San Francisco. It is aimed at giving us Boomers a brain workout the same way we go to a gym for a body workout!

A British company has started offering Alcohol Breath Testing for Events. This is an attempt to educate people about their blood alcohol level before they get in a car. Of course the best answer is to not drink and drive at all, however there will always be those who “think” they are OK. Anything that helps is good … and a new business venture is formed at the same time!

As a biker I had to be intrigued by a new offering from a Swedish company. A tow “motorbike” that is capable of negotiating through traffic to your stalled car and towing you away! Seems like a great idea for the city … as long as the towed vehicle is not damaged.

Given my involvement in a number of charitable causes I couldn’t close out without mentioning Kiva. This is a venture that provides “micro loans” to entrepreneurs in developing nations. The latest twist to this great organization is that they have found a way make their loans go further in partnership with a credit card company. Can you imagine the power of helping budding entrepreneurs to kick start a nation!

As always a brief visit to the Ideas Database helps me to think a little outside the box, and gives me a little inspiration. Hope you enjoy the visit.

Canada Does Not Accept a Recession!

I get a little fed up reading the newspapers and hearing the messages that we on the brink of recession ... there is danger of another great depression .... tighten the belt!!! All this hyperbole does is to feed the fear of a nation and then we just end up believing the bad news and creating our own problem!

So some financial wizards in the US found a way to sell mortgages "on the never never". They made themselves a small killing for a short while and now they have created a US recession. Millions of home owners find themselves in a position where they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, and the impact is huge. Personally I hope that the people who caused this misery will pay, in the same way that errant corporate CEOs paid for their sins in recent years. I really want to read about leaders of these financial institutions going to jail! But that is not the focus of this blog entry!

The good news is that we are in Canada! The Canadian dollar is strong, we did not indulge in the same kind of mortgage madness as the US and we are rich with oil revenues. Our economy is strong and there is no need for us to talk ourselves into a recession! The media talk doom and gloom all the time, because that is what sells. The problem comes when we start to believe it ourselves!

The US caused its own issues and the US economy is no longer the engine of the Global GDP. The emerging markets of India and China are driving demand in the world today, which means that we are no longer as dependant upon the US economy as a global indicator.

So my message to everyone, is that Canada's economy is strong, keep building, keep buying, keep investing and keep doing the things that have created this economy!

DO NOT LET OUR MEDIA TALK US INTO A RECESSION!!!