The world is filled with traditional businesses. Some of these these industries have functioned well for thousands of years. Third-world potters keep alive traditions that were practiced before the Roman empire existed. We owe a lot of respect to business styles that have outlasted whole civilizations and cultures.

And yet we live in a time of great change. Our world population is exploding, we’re on the verge of colonizing space, and we have yet to find a way to provide everyone with a minimal living wage. If you live in a remote rural area you can plant crops and feed your family all year round. But you still need to worry about natural disasters.

Any storm, locust infestation, raging wild fire, or spring river flood can wipe out an entire community. What are those people supposed to do when their livelihoods are gone?

There are two kinds of visionaries in the business world. There are the opportunists who swoop in to make fortunes off the misery or short-sightedness of others. Floyd Odlum was the king of opportunists. According to the New York Times, Floyd Odlum may have been the only man to make a huge fortune from the Great Depression.

Odlum had become wealthy prior to the stock market crash of 1929 by speculating in stocks. Unlike so many other Americans of the time, he feared that the market was in a bubble and he decided to sell out while he could. He took his profits and waited.

When the depression hit Odlum began buying companies for pennies on the dollar. He proved to be a financial genius, the true “Wizard of Wall Street” who inspired the Gilligan’s Island character Thurston Howell III.

Not every opportunist makes money from other people’s misery. William J. Levitt is credited with helping turn America’s post-war economy around in the late 1940s and 1950s. According to the Washington Post, William J. Levitt and his sons were post-war suburb pioneers. Based on their experience in building military facilities during the war, the Levitts revolutionized how civilian housing was built.

The Levitts built Levittown, illustrative a new assembly-line technique of building many similar houses in rapid succession. Veterans who had saved their money during the war suddenly found a large supply of inexpensive homes to buy.

Levittown inspired the explosion of suburban communities around America’s largest cities, leading to the exodus of city-dwellers to the countryside. This transition in how Americans lived led to the Great Commuting Society who drove in to work every day. In cities like New York and Chicago they took the train.

Because of the need to move millions of people across the country, and because of the military benefits of having a limited access highway system, President Dwight D. Eisenhower persuaded Congress and the states to build the Interstate Highway System. This network of high-quality roads made it even easier for developers around the country to build out more suburbs.

When it comes to travel nothing is faster than air travel. But for many years plane tickets were expensive to buy and hard to change. Airlines and travel agents charged steep fees for making changes to travel itineraries.

All of that began to change when American Airlines developed the S.A.B.R.E. system that they and rival airlines used to manage flight reservations. As important as S.A.B.R.E. was to the industry, it was expensive and cumbersome.

In the 1980s American and other companies attempted to create a new inter-industry reservation system for airlines, hotels, and rental car agencies. Although the project ultimately failed its leader, Nicholas Bredimus, went on to launch a software firm that produced QuikTix. Released in the 1990s, QuikTix gave travel agents and airlines a cheap, fast way to issue and change tickets. The cost of consumer air travel began to come down.

Thanks to Bredimus’ innovations the air travel industry was changed forever. Even though competing systems are now available across the Internet, QuikTix was the first system to prove that an independent, third-party reservation booking system could work.

Every generation sees the rise of successful business innovators. They find ways to change the world while most of us go about our lives with no idea of what is happening. These are the kinds of stories you only read about years after they happen.

But the takeaway from this history lesson is that innovation continues. We do need new ideas for business. Some of them are already here. Our children will read about those ideas in 30-50 years. But maybe if you’re lucky you’ll spot one as it takes root and begins to spread. Then you’ll be able to tell future generations you were there when it all began.