Inside the Mind of a (Rich) Inventor

You probably don't know the name Scott Jones, but chances are his life has touched yours. Checked your voicemail lately? You've got Jones to thank. Pop a CD in your computer, and iTunes brings up the track names. That feature comes from another of Jones's companies, Gracenote. When Indiana last year adopted daylight savings time, it was Jones who pushed hardest for the change. The roller coaster at the Indianapolis Zoo? Jones. Dinosaur skeletons at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis? Made possible in part by the Scott A. Jones Foundation. Most folks in the Indianapolis suburb of Carmel (pronounced like the candy) know their wealthy, energetic neighbor as the guy who invented voicemail. In the early '90s Jones made about $50 million on his company, which created the predominate form of voicemail, and he retired at age 31. But he found he wasn't the kind of entrepreneur who could just fly off into the sunset in his helicopter. Over the past two decades this driven inventor has been generating ideas for new products and companies--some were successful, others hit the scrap heap--at a pace that would make Thomas Edison's head spin. Jones's latest company, ChaCha (chacha.com), is developing a potential rival to Google--a search engine assisted by human experts who will help you find your answer.