Great Minds It takes more than just brain power to make it as an inventor.

Funny how drastic changes often sprout from a single thought.For Anthony Korba, the distance between his past and his futureequaled the distance from Orange County, California, up the coastto San Jose. One day in 1991, Korba was flying his small plane tovisit his son in college. By the time he landed, he had an ideathat would consume the next four years of his life.

"I put the plane on autopilot and just sat back and watchedthe [navigational] stations come up every 30 or 40 miles,"says Korba. "After the third or fourth one, I, having a loveof golf, started thinking, this could be the third hole, the fourthhole, the fifth hole. And I wondered, if you could measure thedistance [between navigational aids] from an airplane, whycouldn't you measure the distance on a golf course?"

While most people ponder such ideas for just a moment beforediscarding them, as soon as he landed Korba grabbed a napkin andscribbled design plans for his hand-held electronicdistance-measuring device for golfers.