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Learning Tools:
Class Guides:
Dana Class Guides:
Entrepreneurship Boot Camp:
Business Information Resources
1. Environmental scanning
- Business Source Premier covers business and management topics including company histories, competitive intelligence, and product development. It contains citations, lengthy abstracts, and in most cases, the full-text of articles from 8,000 U.S. and international professional publications, academic journals, and trade magazines. (Rutgers-restricted access)
- About 1,800 newspapers and wire services from around the world (including several New Jersey papers) can be searched on the Access World News database.
(Rutgers-restricted access)
- More news sources are also available on Westlaw Campus Research, including the New York Times from 1980 to the present. (Rutgers-restricted access)
- On the Web are hundreds of Business News Sources and
Industry News and Trade Magazines.
2. Industry analysis
- IBISWorld (Rutgers-restricted access) provides reports for all of the 723 industries in the United States as categorized by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS). IBISWorld research reports contain trends, statistics and analysis on market size, market share of competitors, and industry growth rates.
- Encyclopedia of American Industries, 5th edition, 2008, (Rutgers-restricted access) has reports on about 1,000 industry sectors as categorized by the Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code.
- OneSource aggregates company and industry information from many sources, and provides global coverage of over 4 million firms, more than 100 industry sectors, and over 12 million corporate executives. Key features include ten years of financials for public companies, corporate family relationships, industry averages (for the U.S.), industry profiles, executive biographies, and current news articles. (Rutgers-restricted Access)
- Refer to the Industry Research Guide for other print and online sources of information.
3. Competitive landscape
- ReferenceUSA includes a directory of over 14 million U.S. public and private companies, as well as several special modules: one covering 675,000 U.S. health care providers, and another, CorpTech, covering 95,000 hi-tech companies. (Rutgers-restricted access)
- The number of establishments in each industry, broken down by employee size, may be found in County Business Patterns (organized by NAICS).
- For businesses run by the self-employed, refer to the Nonemployer Statistics for states, metro areas, and counties (also organized by NAICS).
- Consult the
Company Research Guide for other print and online directories, as well as many Web resources.
4. Market research
- Mintel Reports offer product and industry market research reports covering US and International marketplaces. Each report combines data and analysis of the competitive landscape, supply chain, market-share size and trends, and consumer profiles. Complex demographic issues are broken into easy-to-understand sections, explaining consumer behavior and demonstrating the structure of the market. Data is compiled from consumer survey research firms such as Simmons National Consumer Surveys and Harris Interactive, as well as retail sales figures from Information Resources, Inc. and trade associations. (Rutgers-restricted access)
- Consult the Community Fact Sheets on American FactFinder. If available, select the 'Narrative Profile' for your community for s quick summary of the highlights.
- PolicyMap displays many popular categories of demographic information as maps, including population, income, home ownership, and education.
- The Market Research Guide will lead you to dozens more sources of information, both online and in print.
5. Business plans
- There is a 13-volume series of Business Plans Handbooks within the Gale Virtual Reference Library. Click on the "View publications" link for Business to see the individual volumes. (Rutgers-restricted access)
- The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has written a comprehensive document entitled The Credit Process: A Guide for Small Business Owners with sections on what lenders expect to see in a business plan.
- Advice on managing your business, from "Getting Ready" to "Getting Out," is available from the U.S. Small Business Administration's Small Business Planner.
- The Financing Your Business Guide will lead you to many other print and online resources, including a Directory of Angel Organizations.
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