The ability to put a new spin on the old: That's what catapulted Jason Lucash and his business partner, Mike Szymczak, from aspiring entrepreneurs to creators of one of Time's 50 best inventions of the year in 2009. Each year since then, their Costa Mesa, Calif.-based company, OrigAudio, has doubled its sales.
Tired of lugging bulky audio players around on business trips while working for JanSport, the duo started futzing with the idea of putting speakers into Chinese-food takeout boxes. The boxes start flat, and "whenever you want to use it, you pop it up," Lucash says. The idea sounded good. The product? Not so much. They moved on to putting a very old idea--origami--to work. In 2009, with $10,000 in seed money from Lucash's mom, the two launched OrigAudio (origami + audio) with one product: speakers, made entirely from recycled materials, that come flat and fold together. "The Chinese takeout box concept inspired us, but origami is what powered us," Lucash says.