3M makes more than 55,000 products, most of them intentionally unsexy--Scotch tape, dental-care goods, car wax. "But we wanted to flex the muscles at 3M," says designer Todd Bracher, who teamed up with the company's newly launched division, 3M Architectural Markets [3]. "So we looked at the capabilities of their applied sciences and created a new, revolutionary lighting system." Called Lightfalls, the bulbs could look at home in a nightclub or art gallery. (It lands in commercial spaces in January.) To create them, Bracher took a 3M-made, highly reflective optical film and applied it to curved, double elbow-shaped reflectors. For every seven reflectors, one is backlit by an LED, and 98% of the light travels from reflector to reflector, creating a waterfall of light and giving each bulb the illuminative power of seven. That means a 400-square-foot-wall-size system of 97 reflectors uses less energy than a hair dryer--though, no, 3M isn't making hair dryers. Yet. (Price upon request, 3m.com [4])