Research lecture for the eMBA program at Concordia University

When researching or 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.  

Direct link to the Business Research Portal (BRP) at Concordia University Libraries: https://www.concordia.ca/library/guides/business.html

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

Course Outline

1. Know your market & industry: reports from IBIS Wrold; SME Benchmarking; Mergent Intellect
2. Using Google for business research: trade associations & governments
3. Statistics Canada for entrepreneurs: Census & CANSIM
4. Reading up on your idea & staying up to date with articles

Course content

0. Where does information come from?
1. Know your industry – look up industry codes (NAICS)
2. Using Google for business research (governments & trade associations)
  • Find trade associations with Google
    • They post a lot of industry/market information on their websites
    • Trade shows, reports, analysis, press releases, lawsuits, white papers, directories, interviews, newsletters… is there a bias?
    • Watch the video for this step
  • Find government information with Google’s advanced search
    • Most government websites follow a standardized format for their addresses
    • Governments study and regulate many topics relevant for new business
    • Example: 2017 Communications Monitoring Report from the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission
Government LevelExample of “Site/domain”Tip
Municipal.ville.montreal.qc.caLook for “Montréal en statistiques” page for information for boroughs
Provincial.gouv.qc.caThe province deals with mainly: health, education, welfare, culture, agriculture/food…
“Federal”.gc.ca   .gov europa.eu Always check for reports from Industry Canada at site:.ic.gc.ca
Internationalun.org   or other agency Agencies affiliated with the United Nations have their own website
3. Statistics Canada for entrepreneurs
4. Reading up on your idea & staying up to date with articles

Concordia University Library’s Business Research Portal: http://www.concordia.ca/library/guides/business.html

Ce contenu a été mis à jour le 2019-08-22 à 11:34 am.