Boring stuff that people actually need

What companies are doing well right now?  And why?

There's a nice summary in a January 20 blog entry at Economix.  Catherine Rampell checked with Sageworks and posted a table of industry groups with double digit growth.

So who are they?  And why are they growing?  Wow, this really takes me back.

I have an old Doonesbury cartoon framed and conspicuously posted on a prominent wall here at VT KnowledgeWorks.  Mike asks Bernie,the business mogul, what he is working on.  Bernie replies that he had previously been in wireless applications for handheld devices, but that he had recently switched.  Mike asks the obvious question, "To what?"  And Bernie's answer is classic: "Boring stuff that people actually need."  And he follows with, "You'd be surprised how lucrative it is."

Well, guess what dominates the Sageworks table.  Right.  Boring stuff that people actually need.  Whoda thunk it?

One of the handy bits of Business 101 truth to which I constantly return is this simple, but oh, so powerful, question.  "Is there is a compelling marketplace need?"  And in our current situation we might add "that can be expected to transcend macro-economic corrections." 

That's not to say that enterprising folks can't make lots of money on trendy gadgets.  It just points out the additional risk inherent in the profit bulges that arise from that trendiness.