How to Generate Wealth in Any Industry

Over the next decade, every industry will change radically, as wireless services and apps migrate from the edges of industries to the center. In the process, established players will fall, and people now working out of their basements will become rich. Here's a three-step process you can use to become one of the newly rich.

While you follow my explanation, I'd like to suggest that you not think about trying to be the next Facebook. Instead, think about the many "boring" but essential companies and industries that supply our daily needs. These less glamorous niches are rich with opportunity, because few people use this sort of thinking to identify opportunities there.

The 1 to Everything framework below includes three columns, with a blank space at the top of each. Your job is to insert a word or phrase in each box, which will start you on the road to opportunity and wealth.

1. Pick anything you want to help people or companies identify. As you can see from the first column, there's an unlimited variety of people, objects, places and events your system could identify.

2. Specify ways you can differentiate one thing from another. This is where you start to add value. By differentiating the (best) reviewed or (riskiest) or (most trusted) choice from all the others, you can save people, time, money and effort. If you do this in a substantive way, they will pay you for the service.

3. Allow people to interact with the results in the manner they prefer. In this stage, your new service rises above existing offerings. Instead of listing results on a web page, you might incorporate them into a simulation or demonstration. You can turn facts into a game, or break a puzzle down into more easily solvable pieces.

Be patient with me. It takes some effort to understand the vast potential of this seemingly simple three-step process. Here are a few examples of what might emerge from this approach; all are products of my imagination:

• The Cool-Off App identifies your emotions... by differentiating the characteristics of a highly-emotional state... and interacting with phone, texting and email functions to prevent you from communicating with others when you are too upset to think clearly.
• The Fireproof Stove identifies heat levels higher than the burner (i.e. a fire in the frying pan)... differentiates levels that indicate something has caught on fire... and interactswith the burners to shut them off and also a built-in extinguisher to put out any flames.
• The Smart Light system identifies who and what might be in a room... differentiates any human occupants to... interact with the energy-saving program and prevent the motion sensors from turning off the lights when the human occupant doesn't move (this happens to me all the time.) Alternatively, since sitting too long causes health problems, the system could refuse to turn on the lights unless the occupant stands up and leaves the office every 30 minutes.
• The Internal Trend Report is a system that identifies the content in every meeting across your company... differentiates trending topics that might be important... then allows executives to interact with the results via a weekly report.
• The Objective Observer marriage counseling app identifies all remarks each member of a couple says about the other... differentiates those that are especially positive or negative... and interacts with each person by privately telling him or her that s/he was "82% more negative, insulting and ungrateful" this week.

My inspiration for this system was the "IDIC" framework. I simply turned it around so that you can view the world from an individual's perspective and figure out what innovative new services might be especially valuable.