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Entrepreneurship and Innovation Programs

Find resources and information that will help you research and develop your business plan

Overview

This research guide is designed for students in entrepreneurship and innovation programs that need information about a community, market, and specific topics to answer some of the questions included in the table below.

This guide is organized into three sections, which you can navigate to using the tabs on the left:

  1. Guide overview: overview of this research guide
  2. Topic resources: includes sources of information (databases, reference sources, books, journals, organization websites and more) organized by topic (business and economics, places and people, computer and data science, public health, education, immigration, public health, and policy)
  3. Business and industry information: includes step by step instructions on where and how to find specific business documents
  4. Case Studies: includes step by step instructions on where and how to find specific business case studies

 

Information need

Sources

Where to find sources

Market: People and Places

  • What are the characteristics of people that would purchase the product/service?
  • What are the needs of the community?
  • Market analysis reports
  • Data collected by government or intergovernmental agencies
  • Articles in scholarly publications
  • Reports published by government agencies, non-profits, and others
  • News articles

Social Science Open Access Repository

World Bank Open Data

See the Places and People tab in Topic Resources for more sources

Market: Finance and Economics

  • What's the competition?
  • What are the pain points in the industry?
  • What are business trends that could affect sales?
  • Industry reports
  • Business profiles
  • Business news

Business Source Premier

Nexis Uni 

See the Business and Econ tab  in Topic Resources for more sources

Policy

  • What policy might affect or complement my product/service? 
  • Policy and legal documents
  • Articles in scholarly journals
  • Reports and articles from Think Tanks and other organizations

Hein Online

Nexis Uni

Congress.Gov 

See the Policy and Law tab in Topic Resources for more sources

Business Experiences

  • What problems did similar startups run into?
  • What worked well for similar startups? 
  • Case studies
  • Interviews (check interview transcripts and news articles)
  • Articles in business trade publications

Business Source Premier (case studies)

Nexis Uni (interviews and articles)