Googlising the world and other sources of venture ideas and opportunities

I am always trying to find fresh ways to look at the world and to identify opportunities for my ventures. One of my favorite sources is reading what smart forward-looking people are talking about or writing about. I use their views on the way things could unfold to better define a venture idea or to help push an existing idea further forward and make it more specific yet.

These are a few people who I think provide great raw materials.

Jeff Jarvis is a talented writer, blogger (its worth reading his Buzzmachine blog) and academic. He has just written a new book "What Would Google Do?" that should provide some fantastic ideas about what happens if you apply Google's business model in other industries. As he says "The idea: I try to reverse-engineer the success of the fastest growing company in the history of the world, the one company that truly understands how to succeed in the internet age, and then take those lessons and apply them to a number of industries, companies, and institutions, from carmakers to restaurants to universities to government." Many interesting new venture ideas embedded in there I am sure.

Thomas Friedman recently wrote about a similar idea - what would happen if Steve Jobs took over the American Car Manufacturing business. What would the iCar look like? Reading through his latest book, Hot, Flat, and Crowded, as well as his previous book, the World is Flat is a great source of ideas on where there are emerging opportunities in the world linked to changing demands on energy consumption and living patterns.

Malcom Gladwell's books are full of ideas. I found Tipping Point, Blink, and now Outliers to be fascinating and motivating reading.

From Blink alone I developed two business ideas that I launched. One idea came from him talking about a fantastic music testing business called Promosquad. Check out the site and you will find a place where you can listen to and give your opinion about new music. I loved the idea of using crowdsourcing to help identify strong new musical talent, and I saw ways to apply this in the publishing world. On the back of that idea I launched Rapport, an on-line book concept and book cover testing venture that has had some fantastic successes helping publishers make reader-informed decisions about what covers and blurbs will best market a book.

I'd be interested to know what other books you have found are good ones for stimulating ideas and fresh takes on how the world is changing.