White House aside, the world is Mitt Romney's oyster

They predict he will write a book, convinced that the daily diary he kept on the campaign trail would make for a compelling read.

They speculate that he will return to the corridors of finance, where his reputation as a savvy chief executive and investor remains unblemished.

They suspect he could take on a major role in the Mormon Church, picking up where he left off two decades ago.

In conversations over the past 24 hours, friends, aides and advisers to Mitt Romney have begun turning their attention to an issue that until now they have never had to consider: his next move.

After three decades of remarkably seamless career hopping - from Bain Capital to the Olympic Games, from governor of Massachusetts to constant candidate for president - Romney is now a restless chief executive with no organisation to run.

During a meeting at his campaign headquarters in Boston a few hours after conceding to President Barack Obama, Romney told his staff members that they had just witnessed his last political campaign.

But he vowed, in the words of two people in the room, that "I will not fall off the map".