Booze, Whoppers and lottery tickets are the only recession-proof commodities out there, but we’d add one more to the list: brilliant ideas. The 100 companies featured here are evidence that a little brainpower, determination--and good timing--can trump even the worst Pepto-Bismol market.
| Fitness and HealthVideo GamesBoomersMillenialsOutsourcingGreen BuildingSocial ResponsibilityHealth CareAlternative EnergyMobile |
Fitness and Health Everyone from tweens to baby boomers is shelling out for wellness, that catch-all word that includes yoga mats, soccer camps and everything in between. Here are some of the young companies cashing in on the $100 billion trend.
 Brilliant Company:
POC USA
Five years ago, Stefan Ytterborn was watching his kids ski race--but instead of focusing on their turns, he couldn’t get his mind off their flimsy head gear. The Swedish industrial designer, who has worked for Volvo and Ikea, brought his concerns to Dr. Claes Hultling, an M.D. who devoted his practice to spinal cord injuries after a diving accident paralyzed three of his limbs. Ytterborn, 42, had one simple question: "How do we build a safer ski helmet?"
The answer was POC’s first super-safe, but stylish, helmet. Hoping to market it at the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics, but unable to sign on any of Europe’s powerhouse ski teams, he approached the U.S. team.
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Video Games Forget cheat codes and secret levels—today’s gamers demand downloads, online multiplayer functionality, user-created modifications and enough action to give Kiefer Sutherland an asthma attack. So who’s winning in this $9.5 billion industry?
 Brilliant Company:
Bethesda Softworks
Maryland’s Bethesda Softworks is a serial one-hit wonder. While other development houses crank out one adventure after another, Softworks releases a single obsessively detailed title every few years. The massive virtual environments it creates are hotly anticipated by the gamerati. Fallout 3, a single-player role-playing game set in a post-apocalyptic Washington, DC, launched with 4.7 million copies, brought in $300 million in sales, and was hands down the best game of 2008. And the company isn’t finished with Fallout 3. It’s rolling out extension packs with new maps and content every few months, like recent releases Operation: Anchorage and The Pitt, which users can download straight to their PCs or Xbox 360s.
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Boomers Calculators with giant buttons and The Clapper aren’t going to cut it as 78 million baby boomers cross the senior threshold. The key to this massive demographic, which is spending $2 trillion annually, is keeping things functional and stylish.
 Brilliant Company:
Jitterbug
"The wireless industry seemed to be losing touch with a huge number of Americans," says David Inns, CEO of San Diego-based Jitterbug. "There are people who don’t want a giant chunk of functionality jammed into their cell phones." Their solution? A Samsung-built, boomer-friendly phone with a bigger keyboard (none of that circle and click business) and industry-leading background-noise reduction. The result is a phone you can hear and keys you won’t fat-finger. Personal safety is also a hallmark of Jitterbug, which offers 24-hour roadside assistance and a Live Nurse function. When subscribers call customer service, they aren’t directed to a website or manual, but to an operator who will help with tasks remotely, like programming in contacts.
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Millenials Simply "getting on the Facebook thing" isn’t going to cut it when trying to reach Millennials, the more than 75 million Americans spending upwards of $200 billion a year. Here are some companies that have mastered the ethos of an emerging generation. "
 Brilliant Company:
RockCorps
Who says teens are lethargic? Not Stephen Greene, 42, co-founder and CEO of Los Angeles- based RockCorps, a pro-social production company that puts on concerts but doesn’t sell tickets. Instead, RockCorps concertgoers must volunteer four hours to a local nonprofit organization to get into the highly coveted shows, which feature artists like Kanye West and Panic at the Disco. "We found that 80 percent of our core audience of 14- to 25-year-olds were interested in volunteering, but only 10 percent to 15 percent were actually doing so," Greene says.
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Outsourcing It doesn’t matter how you spin it—cosourcing, crowdsourcing, insourcing, offshoring, nearshoring—there are still a few old-fashioned keys to success in the $400 billion global outsourcing industry.
 Brilliant Company:
FreshBooks
Though his business is 100 percent online, FreshBooks co-founder and CEO Mike McDerment is all about getting face time with his customers. Launched in 2004, the company offers a subscription invoicing and time-tracking service to freelancers, independent service providers and small businesses. But McDerment and his crew of 29 aren’t shackled to their monitors: They spend countless hours away from their Toronto offices taking paid subscribers out to dinner in cities throughout the U.S. and Canada. "No one takes care of people in the client-services business," McDerment says. "Taking a customer who pays just $14 a month out to dinner is our way of doing that."
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Green Building Green building has been a marginal business—up till now. With the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 pumping $78.6 billion into the sector—from new schools to home retrofitting—green construction is poised to take off.
 Brilliant Company:
Roofscapes Inc.
Charlie Miller, the founder of Roofscapes Inc., spent much of his recent career as a civil engineer specializing in storm-water management. Turns out much of the dangerous runoff that erodes streambeds and carries a stew of contaminants into water supplies is caused by traditional roof construction, which, by design, sheds water as quickly as it catches it. "I was talking about this problem with a friend who had recently written a best-practices manual for developers," says Miller, 58. "He told me there was a fully developed green roof industry in Germany for water management. I dropped everything, thinking ‘this is the wave of the future.’"
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Social Responsibility Nonprofit, schmonprofit. Today’s do-gooders are making money and changing the world. Social entrepreneurship advocate Ashoka invests at least $30 million in these businesses each year; and you can expect more where that came from.
 Brilliant Company:
The Sexton Company
The last things fans expected was for the Philadelphia Eagles to lead the eco-revolution on their not-so-green home turf. But that’s the genius of Los Angeles-based The Sexton Company, the branding machine behind such environmental tours de force as Live 8, and more recently, the Eagles’ eco-friendly reinvention.
The company is a study in irony: a little-known consulting business with a grass-roots mission that works with corporate giants to shape environmental policy. "We work with companies that have the opportunity to really move the needle in our culture," says co-founder Tim Sexton, 59.
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Health Care Even a bad economy can’t stop angina. Plus, health-care spending was estimated at $2.4 trillion for 2008. Here are 10 companies that know the best medicine for a bad recession is a stellar business model.
 Brilliant Company:
Satori Medical
After a career on the business side of the medical industry, Steven Lash was intrigued when he saw a May 2006 story in Time magazine, headlined "Outsourcing Your Heart." He mulled over the idea, but could never figure out how to turn medical tourism into a moneymaker. "All the articles were talking about people who got terrific care internationally," says Lash, 50. "But these were all people who didn’t have insurance. I didn’t see that as a good business model because what’s to stop them from traveling to buy their health-care on their own?"
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Alternative Energy The 21st century won’t really begin until most of our energy comes from renewable resources. Still, there are signs of hope: Spending on alt-energy equipment and installation is expected to reach $226 billion by 2016.
 Brilliant Company:
Namaste Solar
Blake Jones, 35, began his engineering career as an oilman. But after three years working for KBR Inc., a subsidiary of Haliburton, he had a change of heart. After relocating to Nepal, he quickly moved up the ranks at Lotus Energy, one of the most promising renewable energy companies in Asia. Three years later, after Colorado passed a sweeping energy bill that called for a massive investment in alternatives, he returned to the states and headed to Boulder in 2004 to start Namaste Solar with co-founder Ray Tuomey, 44.
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Mobile A $34 billion industry and one of the fastest-growing segments in today’s economy, mobile applications continue to reap the benefits of "the iPhone effect," with customers opening their wallets for new technology, ringtones and money-saving incentives.
 Brilliant Company:
Plastic Logic
Plastic Logic founders Henning Sirringhaus and Sir Richard Friend, both professors at Cambridge University, didn’t set out to create an e-reader. Their work was, and still is, centered on plastic electronics. But a new technology they’ve spent 10 years developing--which uses flexible plastic substrates to produce durable thin high-contrast displays--has caused some media outlets to call their Plastic Logic Reader a killer to Amazon’s Kindle.
Their wireless device is slated for release in early 2010 and features an innovative touchscreen (as opposed to the Kindle’s keyboard), a durable plastic window (as opposed to glass), and high-contrast reflective display technology (as opposed to LED).
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