In 1994, while keeping his grandmother company at his mom's house in Omaha, Neb., Paul Hogan hatched a business. Barely mobile when her children moved the 89-year-old in, Grandma Hogan, newly pumped up by attention, would live to be a lively 100. What, Paul wondered, did families without available kin do? Providing that answer has propelled Home Instead Senior Care into an international franchising dynamo that reaped $661 million last year and projects a 2009 jump to $738 million on domestic growth of 10% and 26% growth internationally.
With people over age 65 rising from 7% to 15% of the world's...