10 BIG THINKERS FOR BIG BUSINESS
There were, of course, 4 million reasons. Private jets cost at least that much. But next March, if the FAA approves it, a new mass-produced plane called the Eclipse 500 will start zooming around the skies at 420mph. His jets will not only be cheaper to buy ($1.3 million) but also to fly, since the lightweight craft uses less fuel than typical jets. After two years, DayJet expects to be in 35 underserved cities, primarily in the Southeast. Its typical customer will include midlevel managers who can afford the 25 to 75 percent premium over regular full coach fares.
Since DayJets are not flying into crowded hubs, Iacobucci doesn't think air-traffic-control hang-ups will ground them. When he first met with FAA officials, however, they told him he couldn't do what he proposed. "Because we're not allowed or because it can't be done?" he asked. It can't be done, they said. "That's what I like to hear!" he says. He hopes that in the future, DayJet can do for people what Citrix did with telecommuting: help them spend more time at home with their families--or just watching "Jetsons" reruns.
--Martha Brant
It's easy to forget how pie-in-the-sky Steve Case must have sounded 20 years ago when he gushed about how consumers would someday travel the "information superhighway" with a consumer-friendly tollbooth he would call America Online. Now, two years after he was forced out of the company following AOL's disastrous merger with Time Warner, Case plans to apply his consumercentric vision to the American health-care system. It's an obsession provoked in part by tragedy: when his brother Dan was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2002, Case and his family couldn't find a specialist who could save him. But Case's everyday frustrations as a parent also play a role. "Why is it that if your kid is sick over the weekend, you have to either go to the emergency room or wait until 7:31 on Monday morning to call the doctor, when it's harder than getting through to Ticketmaster for seats to a U2 concert?" he asks. "It's because consumers are in the back seat."
Case aims to change that. Two months ago, he launched Revolution, a venture designed to provide consumer-friendly health-care services, both online and retail. Case, now 46, has invested $500 million to buy controlling interests in companies that cater to the holistic tastes of boomers: Wisdom Media Group, Inc., a cable and radio outlet focusing on "wellness"; Miraval, an upscale Arizona spa, and Exclusive Resorts, a high-end second-home membership club.
Loading Menu