Bright Ideas

Indoor geo-location tracking. A new type of energy-efficient light bulb. A smart home-brewing machine that lets consumers make their own craft beer. Predictive analytics that fundamentally change the way businesses operate. These are among the many creative, evolutionary business ideas developed by entrepreneurs in the Pacific Northwest in myriad fields of endeavor, from medicine to geography to retail. In this collection of stories from Seattle Business magazine, we profile some of the region's best early-stage ideas across a wide range of fields. Not all will succeed, but all have the potential to create a big impact, because innovation makes our lives better and tends to have a ripple effect, creating jobs in unexpected places. Seattle draws strengths from the region’s deep knowledge in such areas as retail, aerospace, software, video games, medical device technology and global health. That diverse expertise has resulted in many global companies, including Boeing, Microsoft, Nordstrom, Starbucks, REI, Costco and, yes, Amazon. Each successful business has hired thousands of talented men and women who have, in turn, generated hundreds of other new ideas, many of which result in new companies like the ones profiled here. We hope these ideas will inspire your own innovations.