Radical innovation can alter the landscape of an entire industry. That's the goal of the newly formed Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, part of the U.S. Department of Energy. Modeled after the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), ARPA-E was funded for the first time in last year's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to pursue transformational solutions to the energy problem.ARPA-E was originally proposed in a National Academies report, Rising Above the Gathering Storm.

Bill Gross was famous during the Internet boom as the founder of Idealab, an "incubator" that hatched more than 75 companies. His best-known investment was GoTo.com, which created an online marketplace where advertisers bid for primacy in the results of Web searches--the innovation, now called "keyword advertising," that made Google wildly rich (with the all-important tweak that sponsored and algorithmically derived results should be clearly separated). GoTo.com (which became Overture Services) was sold to Yahoo for $1.6 billion in 2003.

The Powermat Portable is intended for travelers who are tired of lugging around a collection of chargers for mobile devices. Place any device on the mat, and it uses induction to deliver a wireless charge; the power flows to small receivers that can be fitted to most handheld gadgets. The Powermat is powered by an AC adapter, but a built-in lithium-ion battery allows charging when you can't find a wall socket.

In 2006, semiconductor-equipment giant Applied Materials got into the solar-power market in a big way. At the company's headquarters in Santa Clara, CA, you can see just how big: a ceiling-mounted crane lifts a piece of glass the size of a garage door onto a table for testing.