The truth, however, is that many of the world’s most successful enterprises got their start in the depths of economic downturns. Microsoft, FedEx, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Walt Disney Studios and Beechcraft all were created and spurred to their earliest successes during times of deep economic trials. Now household names, these companies and others like them founded empires – and reshaped the world – during bleak business times by striking at the hearts of their industries with powerful new ways of doing business. With a handful of disruptive innovations, they changed the rules for everyone.

The power of a single disruptive idea is often enough to shake the world.

In January 1841, something new and entirely novel sailed into Chinese waters at the height of the China’s First Opium War: the Nemesis, Britain’s first ocean vessel made entirely of iron. For millennia, wood was the favored and natural material for ships. Iron, on the other hand, was heavy. Iron did not naturally float, commonly considered a thoroughly unsuitable construction material for ships – especially in wartime. In the Nemesis, however, a ship designer named John Laird incorporated a single new idea – the watertight bulkhead – that allowed the British Navy to set sail for China heavily armed with effectively a floating fortress. This one disruptive innovation changed modern ocean travel completely, forever.

Disruptive ideas are the ones that rewrite the rules. They don’t require mammoth investments, or large amounts of resources dedicated to directly compete in established markets. These real innovations – such as Microsoft’s PC operating systems, or the overnight delivery reach of FedEx, or John Laird’s bulkhead – force unexpected changes on existing value chains, leading to entirely new market paradigms.

As your competitors fight for smaller and smaller pieces of shrinking markets, how can your business spark a breakthrough? How can your disruptive idea transform the world?

Challenge the cliches. In every industry, cliches and assumption lead businesses to make the same mistakes over and over again, blinding them to the real opportunities revealing themselves. Everyone knows that no one will pay more for Product X. Everyone knows that without Service Y, maintaining a competitive edge is impossible. Look carefully at the universally accepted axioms that permeate your industry. How many are merely assumptions and old wives tales? Are there any exceptions to the rules, ways to turn cherished beliefs on their heads?

Try new things at every opportunity. When in doubt, diversify: overly concentrating your efforts on a single limited business plan is certain to blind you to the powerful opportunities that await just outside the reach of your perception. Be a fool. Fight the tide. Attempt the impossible whenever you can – you’ll be surprised how often you actually achieve it.

Build a better magic lamp. Deep down, everyone wants to find a genie’s lamp and wish their way to fame, fortune and success. They want to achieve more while working less, to harness ever more simple powers to create mightier and more profound achievements. People tend to overcomplicate things. How can you instead make things simpler? How can you offer your customers the magic lamp they need to solve all of their problems with a single well made wish?

Leverage small societies. As you consider larger and larger groups of customers, products, services and business requirements, the unique differences that can inspire real innovation get lost in statistical noise. Avoid obscuring your vision in the mass averaging of lowest common denominator thinking. Instead, turn to the small groups, to the small societies that still allow for individual expression and specialized niche demands. Developing micromarkets can spark important insights that will enable you to reinvent major industries.

Preempt established value. Don’t prejudge your worth. True innovation defines its own price by disrupting the value chains that already exist. How can your idea alter how people perceive the cost value of existing, established products and services? By forcing a perspective shift in how value is created, traded and used in the world, the value of your own idea becomes nearly unlimited.

Breakthroughs are common, because ideas are easy to come by. Ideas are everywhere, available to anyone with an interest in finding them. Disruptive ideas, however, are more than creative fancies: combined with intelligent market insight and the will to succeed, they can form the blueprint for a new world. And they can deliver fortune to the business brave enough to follow their lead.

Aug 15, 2011 – NEW YORK, NY – Everyone has at least one of them in their life. Someone who irritates you and makes life difficult. Maybe your newspaper carrier left your paper out in the rain again or your neighbor let his dog go the bathroom on your lawn again. Are you tired of the incessant demand to be social with people who just plain bug you?  Now you can strike back with Bugging Me, a brand new, FREE, amusing viral iPhone, iPad, and iTouch app that lets you match up the annoying people in your life with online comical bug cartoons…sure to make people laugh and to get across what you really think of people.  This app is perfect for those people who want to turn social networking on its head with wit and style.

Bugging Me is a product of Lounge Lizard Worldwide, Inc – a New York based creative agency specializing in the creation of new and innovative mobile apps and websites. The app is extremely easy to use, you simply pick a bug that represents the person who is bugging you, type in who or what is bugging you, then let the world know who is bugging you! You can launch your bug to your Facebook wall, Twitter Feed, or even email or text blast to all your friends! Some of the hilarious bug icons include “The Attention Seeker”, “The Backstabber”, “The Gossip Queen”, “The Cry Baby”, “The Egomaniac” and “The Hothead.”

SmokinApps.com gave Bugging Me 4 out of 5 stars and said, “All in all, this is a fun little, innocent app, because all these little bugs are very cute. The Know It All, for instance, is actually quite cuddly, especially seeing as it’s a bug! I think that’s why this app isn’t mean or nasty, it’s just a friendly nudge to a relative or a friend or even a teacher. The cartoons are very good and make this app!”

“Everyone has someone who gets on their nerves and bugs them,” said Ken Braun, CEO of Lounge Lizard Worldwide, Inc. “We created Bugging Me as a fun way for people to express themselves in a way that is meant to entertain. It could be a friend, a neighbor, a government official…even a celebrity. Now you can tell the world who’s bugging you.”

For more information on Bugging Me and download instructions for the app: http://www.whosbuggingme.com

Aug 15, 2011 – NEW YORK, NY – Everyone has at least one of them in their life. Someone who irritates you and makes life difficult. Maybe your newspaper carrier left your paper out in the rain again or your neighbor let his dog go the bathroom on your lawn again. Are you tired of the incessant demand to be social with people who just plain bug you?  Now you can strike back with Bugging Me, a brand new, FREE, amusing viral iPhone, iPad, and iTouch app that lets you match up the annoying people in your life with online comical bug cartoons…sure to make people laugh and to get across what you really think of people.  This app is perfect for those people who want to turn social networking on its head with wit and style.

Bugging Me is a product of Lounge Lizard Worldwide, Inc – a New York based creative agency specializing in the creation of new and innovative mobile apps and websites. The app is extremely easy to use, you simply pick a bug that represents the person who is bugging you, type in who or what is bugging you, then let the world know who is bugging you! You can launch your bug to your Facebook wall, Twitter Feed, or even email or text blast to all your friends! Some of the hilarious bug icons include “The Attention Seeker”, “The Backstabber”, “The Gossip Queen”, “The Cry Baby”, “The Egomaniac” and “The Hothead.”

SmokinApps.com gave Bugging Me 4 out of 5 stars and said, “All in all, this is a fun little, innocent app, because all these little bugs are very cute. The Know It All, for instance, is actually quite cuddly, especially seeing as it’s a bug! I think that’s why this app isn’t mean or nasty, it’s just a friendly nudge to a relative or a friend or even a teacher. The cartoons are very good and make this app!”

“Everyone has someone who gets on their nerves and bugs them,” said Ken Braun, CEO of Lounge Lizard Worldwide, Inc. “We created Bugging Me as a fun way for people to express themselves in a way that is meant to entertain. It could be a friend, a neighbor, a government official…even a celebrity. Now you can tell the world who’s bugging you.”

For more information on Bugging Me and download instructions for the app: http://www.whosbuggingme.com

Coover’s team began experimenting with an acrylic substance, a promising possibility that Kodak dubbed “Eastman 910″. Unfortunately, Eastman 910 proved frustrating and ultimately useless for the project’s needs – while it proved heat resistant and non-porous, it was also extremely sticky. It simply stuck to everything. The formula was filed away for nine years, until Coover’s team reevaluated the Eastman 910 substance for a different job. Realizing that it actually would create a unique chemical adhesive bond, Eastman Kodak saw the failed formula in an entirely different light.

Super Glue was born. And an overlooked, minor product sideline at Eastman Kodak turned into a massive multi-billion dollar industry.

Sometimes astounding successes spring from failure, or from brilliant inspirations that at first go overlooked and ignored. Today, rapidly growing businesses are built to be idea engines, and to not let any of these opportunity flashes go to waste. As Louis Pasteur once said, chance favors a prepared mind – if your business is going to grow and succeed in today’s hypercompetitive economy, you can no longer stay overfocused on a core business. You must diversify into new things and more creative avenues, and avoid staying frozen in place. The will to be bold can take you far – and can prepare you to take advantage of divine accident when it happens.

Lounge Lizard Worldwide is evolving. Traditionally, we have been a dedicated service company, providing high quality web and mobile development services for businesses eager to make the most of their imaginative and creative assets. That model has been good to us – but like every other successful business, we are branching into new vistas. We’re excited about these new initiatives, part of a new Lounge Lizard division dedicated to incubating great inspirations into full grown, high profit digital products and services.

In future issues of Libation, we look forward to sharing these new plans with you, and to show how your business can likewise grow good ideas into profit powerhouses. In August, the first two of these Lounge Lizard projects will be publicly unveiled – and we invite you to see how creative inspiration can put your business ahead of the pack.

ManWall Part men’s magazine, part corner sports bar and all for men, ManWall.com is a social network designed as a user contributable community for the advancement and appreciation of male interests. From money to women, sports to politics, this online social watering hole gives voice to the American male – and dares to say everything today’s man is really thinking. Ready to launch in mid-August, this exciting next generation social networking project is sure to be a Monday morning conversation starter.

Who’s Bugging Me Are you tired of the incessant demand to be social with people who, well, just bug you? Strike back with this amusing viral iPhone app that lets you match up the annoying people in your life with online comical bug cartoons, sure to make people laugh and to get across what you really think of people. Perfect for those people who want to turn social networking on its head with wit and style.

What ideas are you working on?

Building a successful business requires strategy matched with style, imagination met with true vision – and a true bold willingness to grow, rather than to just survive. We all have great ideas, but few are willing to throw their full weight behind them, throwing caution to the wind and pursuing the higher goal of being truly great. To stay ahead in this economy, you need to diversify and evolve by chasing the stars.

Often, the greatest successes spring from simply trying something new – and then recognizing later the real value in the discoveries you make. Strike for gold, and seek opportunity when it comes. Commanding your full bravery and entrepreneurial passions, you won’t regret it.