A recent blog highlighted business processes and trends of the past, so this week I thought I’d turn the tables and write my wish list for future business inventions I’d like to see. Here they are, in no particular order.



1. A teleporter



Remember when Star Trek’s Captain Kirk would say ‘Scotty, beam me up’ and he’d be instantly transported to wherever he wanted to go? I need one of those machines. I’d never have to sit in traffic again, I could go anywhere in the universe, any time I wanted. Massive productivity enhancer.



2. Bulls#@t siren



You know when you’re in a meeting or talking to a colleague or supplier and you know they are talking utter rubbish? What I need is an alarm that lets everyone know not to take any notice of what the offender says. Huge reduction in time wasting for everyone concerned.



3. PhD in a pill



Forget going to uni – just pop a pill.



4. Foldable laptop



Laptops are heavy and cumbersome. If you’re going anywhere for any length of time you also have to take a charger, which is also unwieldy. So what I need is some sort of device that maybe you could screw up into a little ball. The material would be solid when you wanted it to be, so you could type on it, but when you wanted to throw it in your bag, it would scrunch up into something like one of those stress balls. It would also weigh as much as a stress ball. In fact it would be great if it doubled as a stress ball.



It would also be good if the one device was your laptop and your phone. Yes, I know you can already use your laptop as your phone with Skype. But I need a device, sort of like a Transformer toy, that could be smartphone-size one minute, then fold out to be laptop-size the next.



5. Immediate sickness cure



Never suffer through a cold or the flu again. Just apply this patch to your skin and you’re better straight away. I realise the pharmaceutical companies have probably been trying to invent this for, oh, a hundred years or so. But for the record, I came up with the idea first.



6. Sleep injection



Need a nana nap? Take this injection and you’re suddenly refreshed.



7. “Get out of/into my office” force



Someone’s in your office and you really can’t be bothered talking to them anymore. All you need to do is blink twice and the person’s chair suddenly shoots back and out the door. Leaving you in pleasant solitude.



Want someone in your office? No need to buzz them to come in. Blink three times and that person’s chair whizzes around to your desk and they are suddenly in front of you.



8. Spell to eliminate time wasting

You know when you do something like submit an application for finance, or send your accounts to your bookkeeper, or have to line up in the post office to send a parcel? I need a spell that completely eliminates the time wasted waiting for the result. The spell would mean you would immediately get your finance approval (or rejection), your accounts would be instantly done and your parcel at its final destination. Then you would get on with whatever task that depended on the completion of the first action.



9. A clone



How useful would a clone be? The clone could do all the boring stuff while I would just do the interesting things, like finding stories and writing. All right, who am I fooling? The clone could do the lot. I would just relax.



10. Dump button



This isn’t really an invention as it already exists, but wouldn’t it be great if you could invoke the dump button that radio hosts can use when a caller’s language gets blue? Except I wouldn’t use it for foul language, I’d use it for oxygen thieves. You know the type – people with too much time on their hands who ring you up and go on about something completely trivial, because they haven’t got anything better to do. In my Utopia, I’d just be able to dump the call, with no ramifications, no questions asked. That would be heaven.



What would you invent to make your working life easier?