I've been thinking about starting a small business lately, but I'm looking for some ideas. Any thoughts?
Yes! You could use design thinking to allow creative strategies to be developed for your new business! 
design thinking? I've never heard of that, perhaps I'll look into it. As far as creativity I'm thinking about an online t shirt company.
Design management
Design management is a field of inquiry that uses project management, design, strategy, and supply chain techniques to control a creative process, support a culture of creativity, and build a structure and organization for design. The objective of design management is to develop and maintain an efficient business environment in which an organization can achieve its strategic and mission goals through design. Design management is a comprehensive activity at all levels of business (operational to strategic), from the discovery phase to the execution phase. "Simply
Even with the Direct3D side of things, where I know I have a long history of people thinking I'm antagonistic against it. Microsoft has done a very, very good job of sensibly evolving it at each step—they're not worried about breaking backwards compatibility—and it's a pretty clean API. I especially like the work I'm doing on the 360, and it's probably the best graphics API as far as a sensibly designed thing that I've worked with."
Some design features of Direct3D have remained