He has earned business for his companies and for himself as a consultant by converting old school executives into acolytes of the religion of statistics.

FORBES: Gambling Wiz Deals Business Advice in 'House Advantage'

Everyone wants to get in on the REIT bonanza, as operating businesses from cellphone towers to timber companies, billboard firms and private prisons are converting to REITs.

FORBES: REITs Boom As More Industries Discover This Tax-Friendly Structure

To do this, companies are taking on the multiyear process of converting voice calls into Internet traffic so the same airwaves can be used for voice or data.

WSJ: U.S. Wireless Carriers Move to New Technology��for Voice

Converting cars to electric could be a big business, and some companies, such as ALTe, have been trying to make it such.

FORBES: Written by Jim Motavalli

But like other social gaming companies, Zynga allows users to speed up the process by converting real dollars from their credit card and PayPal accounts into the FarmVille currency used to buy virtual goods.

FORBES: How Zynga, Facebook and Groupon's Go-To Auditor Rewrites Accounting Rules

Or starts converting publicly-available data directly into simple news articles, as a host of companies are already doing?

FORBES: Siri, How Long Until You Can Read Me the News?