Researching business intelligence for new ventures
District 3 library research seminar handout
When launching a new business, information about industries, markets or competitors can be invaluable. In this session, we will cover resources from the Internet as well as licensed market and industry intelligence databases available from Concordia University Library. This is a workshop adapted from the “Entrepreneurship” course at the John Molson School of Business.
Learning objectiveS
- Locate industry and market reports from the Internet and the Library
- Understand how to use datasets from Statistics Canada (Census & Cansim) and other national agencies
- Develop a healthy information diet
Proposed Course Outline
1. Where does information come from?
It is imperative to use both licensed (library) and free web sources to have a complete picture.
2. Know your industry
- (free web) SME Benchmarking: Average income statements and financials for Canadian small & medium businesses, by industry (NAICS). Direct link to the video for this step
- (library) IBIS World: Industry reports for Canada, USA, China and Global, filed by NAICS Code. Direct link to the video for this step
- Business Directories: Find competitors, clients, suppliers, market leaders
3. Using Google for business research (governments & trade associations)
- Find trade associations with Google watch the video for this step
- Find government information with Google’s advanced search
4. Statistics Canada for entrepreneurs (including SimplyMaps)
- Statistic Canada: Census, National household survey & CANSIM
- SimplyMap Canada : color density map based on data from Statistic Canada watch the video for this step
5. Reading up on your idea & staying up to date with articles
- Think about your business idea when searching, use a variety of keywords:
- (1) industry (use NAICS, watch out for jargon)
- (2) trade associations
- (3) market leaders and major competitors
- (4) other subject term like a business trend
- News and articles from ProQuest Business Databases and EBSCO’s Business Source Complete.
- Setup an RSS feeds from ProQuest, EBSCO and Google to automatically receive notifications
We will use the Business Research Portal:
And this handout:
(We can discuss adapting these to the District3 website)
Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 2018-12-20 à 12:59 pm.