Solar City is a company that is finding ways to create profit from the residential and commercial use of solar energy. They did not invent a new solar panel or a new technology but focus on creative ways to help homes and businesses afford the up-front installation costs of switching their energy needs to solar. This approach to making solar energy an affordable option for millions may be more important than even inventing a new type of solar battery itself.

Other companies have created business opportunities by addressing the world’s most serious medical needs. Malaria kills up to 3 million people a year, mostly children, and is the leading cause of death in ­children worldwide, mostly in Africa. The disease is transmitted easily, whereas the drugs currently used to treat it are becoming increasingly ineffective.

Many businesses haven’t found a way to balance the tremendous research costs associated with creating a malaria vaccine with the anticipated meager profits from it. Enter Sanaria, a pharmaceutical company founded by Dr. Stephen Hoffman, whose mission is to create a malaria vaccine. Hoffman ­remarks, “I haven’t spent 25 years working on diseases of the most disadvantaged and ­neglected people in the world to start a company that’s just here to make money.”28 The malaria vaccine the company has developed has completed its first phase of clinical trials.

Still other companies are creating business opportunities by fighting censorship. The Chinese government maintains a tight rein on the flow of information to its citizens, including controlling the accessibility of certain Internet sites. This policy of censorship garnered the attention of the international business community when, in 2010, after four years of complying with China’s system of censorship so that search results were edited before being presented to users, Google did an about-face and announced it would no longer censor search results for China.29 Google’s announcement was met by an announcement from Microsoft that its Bing search engine would continue to abide by Chinese censorship laws. The Bing search engine has even been charged with censoring information for Chinese language users in the United States in the same way.30

This censorship left the founder of Dynamic Internet Technology (DIT), Bill Xia, with a skewed view of the world when he arrived in the United States from China. DIT and similar companies provide a paid service that counteracts the impact of censorship. When a site is placed on the list of censored sites by the Chinese government, DIT quickly creates a new, uncensored web address that points users to the same material. A list of the new accessible sites is then e-mailed to web surfers who want full Internet access. Chinese censors often stamp out the new site within a few days, at which point DIT starts the process again, determined to override China’s censorship. DIT and other companies are showing there are ways to fight censorship and profit from it. The service DIT provides may continue to be important because other countries, including India, are now requiring Google to restrict content their governments feel are “antisocial” or “antireligious.”31