There's something amidst going on right now in this time of economic struggle. Many jobs are being lost, many businesses hurting bad, some business gone for good.

Amidst Strife
That said, where one business closes, it's an opportunity for another business, perhaps a new business to take that edge. For anyone who's been planning a business, right now there's less competition and more time to build strength.

So what kind of business?
A business model that is likely to come out of the works on top in today's economy is a web based business, or at least, a business highly integrated- taking full advantage of the web.

Many people have thought for years that eventually, there will be very few stores we walk into to purchase items. Eventually, most stores will be online, saving costs in many ways; Building rents, number of employees necessary reduced, reduced liability (customers no tripping over a snag in your rug, costing your company $42,000). Overhead cost is reduced significantly.

Getting there faster
Well, this economic struggle is going to give those types of businesses a push. So they'll be here sooner than everyone expected, or taking over sooner rather, considering they're already here. I suppose it's been pretty obvious since the number of shipping companies has grown and their services continue to grow as well.

We're all in a rush here in the USA, and many other parts of the world too. More and more, we'll be wasting less time going to stores. Perhaps someone should develop a shipping system more adept to our new way of life.

More efficient shipping
Shipping prices need to come down more and waste less gas: E.g. Perhaps unmanned, automated shipping routes designed specifically and only for shipping. What the hell are our boxes doing waiting on the highway? They can travel faster and more efficient another way. It is probably much more currently feasible for a shipping service to build this kind of automated highway for shipping than it is to automate human driven cars - that's a long ways in the future, buddy. There's too much costly, timely, and disrupting conversion necessary for that, especially on the individual scale.

If someone builds an automated shipping service, especially if you're already a shipping company with employees jobs who may be threatened by this... Offer them paid schooling/training for your upcoming or current endeavor to increase shipping efficiency.