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Talk about a big idea and innovative product that this entrepreneur started!

Anthony & James Tiscione are the father/son inventors behind the ACM Wallet - a specially designed wallet that allows you to protect & select up to 12 of your favorite credit, ID and membership cards at the push of a button.

The idea for the ACM Wallet came to James while he was returning home from the supermarket. Up until then, James carried his credit cards wrapped in cash and held together with a rubber band. This often resulted in demagnetized credit cards and torn cash. James felt there had to be a better way - and with the help of his father, he created a prototype of his idea.

To date, the ACM Wallet has generated $5.5 million in sales…making it our pick for the MILLION DOLLAR IDEA OF THE WEEK.

CNBC

What is the easiest way to think of a new invention?

It’s so simple sometimes it boggles my mind: Take anything from your every day life and MAKE IT BETTER! If there’s a niche that’s not being filled or a way to improve anything you do, I guarantee people will buy it.

The trick is just spotting that opportunity. Million dollar ideas are literally everywhere, waiting for someone to stumble upon them. If these products don’t make you realize that, I don’t know what will.

What my guests on Monday did is they took something that frustrated them so much that they just had to do something about it! Take Cozy Friedman for example. She took a parent’s monthly nightmare–getting a child a hair cut–and transformed it into something the kids were virtually begging to do. Jennifer Panepinto and Gregg Levin–with both Mesu Bowls and the Perfect Curve–have taken a process and simplified it, making life easier, AND are now making millions! Quiqlite, Breezies and the Peanut sling also accomplish similar things, plain and simple: they make things better, they make life easier.

The take-home message here is that you don’t have to come up with something entirely novel for it to be a winning innovation. You can’t let the thought that “this is too simple, this is too easy” stop you from really pursuing an idea you believe in. Most of the time, when an idea or a product is just “too simple” or “too easy” and it’s not already out there, you’ve got yourself a million dollar idea!

Donny CNBC

While we’ve certainly seen more dramatic heists before, this particular run-in with the law melds cleverness and ignorance in perfect harmony.

After conjuring up grandiose thoughts of subversion, a less-than-reasonable fellow managed to snag a 42-inch Sanyo plasma, replace the $984 pricetag with a slightly less burdensome $4.88 sticker, and carry it to the front where he utilized a self-checkout register to all but steal a brand new PDP.

Presumably grinning from ear to ear just basking in the glory of his brilliance, we imagine the mood went south quite quickly after store officers approached the man and demanded a receipt. Of course, he attempted to sweet talk his way out of the predicament, but the end result landed him in handcuffs at the Ouachita Correctional Center. Can’t blame a guy for tryin’, eh?

BoyGeniusReport

As owners of MikWright Ltd., a Charlotte, North Carolina-based greeting card company, Tim Mikkelsen, 45, and Phyllis Wright-Herman, 44, employ a group of friends and neighbors to glue old family photos to off-size greeting cards.

The duo then writes humorous, snarky captions for the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s-era pictures. Sounds like a simple, old-fashioned kind of operation, right? Well, it is, except for the fact that the company sells its products in more than 10,000 retail locations around the world and generated sales of $1.3 million last year.

Despite the fact that they could easily afford to mass-produce their products, the owners feel it’s important to keep the same production methods they’ve used since launching the company in 1992. “There’s not a machine that can guarantee the quality control that a human can,” says Mikkelsen. “We’re not looking to be this huge conglomerate. It would change who we are and what we do.”

Entrepreneur

Increasing numbers of experienced, older workers and new retirees are thinking about delaying retirement or rejoining the workforce. But despite growing problems finding experienced help, employers see older workers as a mixed bag, according to a survey by the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Over 80 percent of employers said older workers were “as attractive” or "more attractive” than younger employees. The big draw is productivity: Employers believe older employees know their work and how to do it well. What’s the hesitancy? They fear older workers also cost more in pay and benefits. What to do? The key finding of the survey is that an aging workforce can be a good thing for both employers and employees. Given money saved by a highly productive worker, employers appear willing to hire older employees and may be willing to pay more. And senior workers, especially those out of work, may be willing to accept less pay. KipLinger, Photo: LifeStartSat

The evening was to be a launch, of sorts. The Durham Bulls were opening an eight-game home stand June 14. What better way to promote the wind-in-your-face fun of a pedicab ride than offering free pregame rides from the parking lot to the ballpark?

“A limited audience, I guess, ” Dana Di Maio said as he sat on his dark blue pedicab after the game started. “I took three rides total … no, four.”

Di Maio is the part-time pedicab coordinator for Greenway Transit, part of a Durham nonprofit pushing a variety of “green” initiatives ranging from its fleet of biodiesel buses and vans to biofuels to Third World fair trade.

Right now Di Maio is also the only driver for the two pedicabs that over time he hopes will become part of the streetscape linking the American Tobacco Historic District, downtown Durham, Brightleaf Square and Ninth Street. He’s looking for drivers and exposure, some of which the pedicabs will get Saturday in the parade that accompanies Durham Rising.

Di Maio’s first riders of the evening last week couldn’t pass up the free novelty, which came with their confession: “I’m lazy,” said both Curtis Walker, 18, and Michael Leathers, 19, before jumping into the pedicab for a brisk three-minute ride from the East Pettigrew Street parking deck around the corner to the ballpark’s front entrance on Blackwell Street. Among the other riders were a middle-aged couple and two younger women.

“The people seemed to like it,” Di Maio said. “One person said it was like New York.”

Durham News

Entrepreneur J.A. Tosti created Left Lane Drivers of America as a diverse, very loosely affiliated group of drivers who share the common objective of reducing the Left Lane congestion on our freeways and multi-lane highways by politely encouraging slow drivers to move over.

In order to actually help slower drivers move right, LeftLaneDrivers.org offers windshield decals (USD $29) which boldly and prominently display their unified sentiment in the offending driver’s rearview mirror. The decal, which reads “MOVE OVER” when viewed through a rearview mirror also has a large arrow showing the slower driver where to go.

“Although the sign minces no words, the idea here is not to be rude or pushy, but to offer slow drivers a gentle prod, reminding them of the need to either pick up the pace or make room for those who choose to drive a bit faster,” Tosti explains. The bottom line, he claims, simply is highway courtesy and safety, as well as “doing one’s part to help traffic flow smoothly.”

If buying the new Apple iPhone isn’t enough of a status symbol, try having someone else do it for you. You’ll still be paying, of course–probably double, since many “stand-ins” are charging as much as the cost of the phone for their services–but at least you won’t have to wade through an endless line of anxious Apple enthusiasts to do it.

Over the past few weeks, Craigslist has become overrun with listings offering stand-in-line services for those who want iPhone status without the fuss. Buyers seeking stand-ins have several options to choose from as everyone from schoolteachers to high-school students are prepared to offer their services. Many highlight special line-standing techniques, such as policing the line for cutters, which they say will help them stand out among the competition. The practice has even become a part-time business for some, as popular releases, such as the Nintendo Wii and Sony PS3, mean major bucks for stand-ins.

If your an entrepreneur and want to make money, do like we did with the PS3 or Nintendo Wii and sell it on eBay.

Back in the early 1980s, Frank Crail had a dream that many of us harbor in some small corner of our souls. A successful - if harried - tech entrepreneur in sunbaked Southern California, Crail yearned for a small town in the cool mountains where he and his wife could raise a big family and savor the simple life. So he moved to Durango, Colo. (pop. 15,000), and started looking around town for a way to make a living.

“I realized I had two options: a car wash or a chocolate store,” Crail recalls. “I’m not a car-wash kind of guy, so I opened the chocolate factory.”

Crail wasn’t exactly a candy man, either. He mixed his first batch of chocolate on a Ping-Pong table and got it all wrong. The nut clusters were as big as hockey pucks. The peanut-butter cups were a size D. But it turned out that folks were hankering for supersized sweets. Crowds gathered, and not just for the chocolate. Part of the fun was watching the new shopkeeper fumble around in his open kitchen.

Today Crail’s Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory is the largest U.S. chocolate retailer in terms of locations, surpassing Godiva and See’s. Rocky Mountain has 325 stores in 44 states and this year plans to open 40 more. Revenues rose 13 percent, to a record $31.6 million, in fiscal 2007. (Same-store revenues, however, were flat.) Profits climbed 17 percent, to an all-time high of $4.7 million, propelling the company to No. 80 on the FSB 100.

Money CNN

It took a few years before Martine Rothblatt got used to describing her daughter’s chronic lung disease as a lucrative market opportunity. “I choked every time I said it - it sounded so immoral,” says Rothblatt, 52. But when she realized that the fastest track to a cure was to launch a biotech firm and then take it public, Rothblatt started United Therapeutics (unither.com).

That was in 1996, and today she is convinced that capitalism is the answer. “I no longer have any doubt about the benefit of using profit motivation to develop cures,” she says. “It’s the language I need to build the company,” she says. “It’s the language that Wall Street understands.”

Rothblatt had no background in biotech: She had started her career as a corporate lawyer and gone on to help launch three successful satellite-communication companies, including Sirius Satellite Radio (Charts). In 1995, Rothblatt sold some of her telecom stock and used the proceeds to fund nonprofit PPH research. But after spending $2 million over two years, she saw little progress and grew discouraged.

She started researching the disease herself and found more than just a potential treatment - she found a business opportunity. The National Institutes of Health estimates that more than 200,000 suffer from PPH worldwide. Each patient pays as much as $150,000 a year for treatment - a $7.5 billion market in the U.S. alone.

After selling her vision of an inhaled PPH therapy to angel investors, Rothblatt tracked down and recruited two scientists who had developed a promising PPH drug at Burroughs Wellcome before it merged with Glaxo in 1995. It took Rothblatt seven months to license the compound, which Glaxo had shelved in favor of Flolan. Rothblatt founded United Therapeutics in 1996 and took the company public three years later.

Reaching her goal of developing an inhaled drug would take years of clinical trials, and Rothblatt had to find a way to keep investors happy in the meantime. “Something I learned from my satellite companies - you have to develop iterations of your products over time, producing real revenues incrementally,” she says.

In 2002 the FDA approved the company’s first version of Remodulin, the compound she licensed from Glaxo. Remodulin, which patients inject under their skin, lasts as long as three hours in a patient’s bloodstream and doesn’t have to be cooled. The drug, say some pulmonologists, is easier and safer to administer than Flolan. Neither a spokesman for Glaxo nor one for the drug’s U.S. distributor would comment on the ease and safety of the use of Flolan.

Money CNN