Home - ENT 101 - Introduction to Entrepreneurship - LibGuides at University of Rochester

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We’ve done our best to select the most pertinent materials for these Course Resources pages, but if these are not helping with your topic/project, we encourage you to use the Schedule an Appointment link in the Profile box on this page.

Resurces for this class

All Purpose Search Tips for Simon Students
This is a quick handout of research and search strategies for databases, suitable for all situations. Take a moment to review it!

Let's start with some background:

Entrepreneurship Essential Topics This link opens in a new window
Readings, reports, & predefined search macros for the most important topics in entrepreneurship: start-up, funding, legal etc. This database is part of the full "ProQuest Entrepreneurship" database, listed next.
List of topics: Business Cases; Business Plan Samples; Business Start-Up; Company Profiles; Funding Sources; Guides, Templates and Tools; Legal Issues; Management and Leadership; Marketing and Sales; Operations Management; Profit and Financial Management; Product Development and Management; Special Topics; and Tips and Advice video clips. (whew)
Entrepreneurship This link opens in a new window
Contains market reports, articles, business plans, business cases, and sample templates and forms needed by entrepreneurs.
Click the Browse option to access these specific topics: Business Cases; Business Plan Samples; Business Start-Up; Company Profiles; Funding Sources; Guides, Templates and Tools; Legal Issues; Management and Leadership; Marketing and Sales; Operations Management; Profit and Financial Management; Product Development and Management; Special Topics; and Tips and Advice video clips.

And, how about some (e)books? We have a whole collection of ebooks from "Business Expert Press" - which specializes in a very practical, real-world approach, AND very friendly user options: you can download entire books to your device-of-choice to read on the go.

Business Expert Press This link opens in a new window
E-textbooks emphasizing real-world examples and applications. ~300 titles covering the gamut of business topics. Fully downloadable.

Here are some specific examples:

Starting Your Business by Sanjyot Dunung
ISBN: 9781606491362
Publication Date: 2010-04-01
Launching a Business by Bruce Barringer
ISBN: 9781606493984
Publication Date: 2013-01-23
Developing New Products and Services by G. Lawrence Sanders
ISBN: 9781606492420
Publication Date: 2011-10-14
Growing Your Business by Sanjyot Dunung
ISBN: 9781606491348
Publication Date: 2010-05-01

So you have an idea. You might want to find out more about the "space" in which your idea/business fits - i.e., do some industry research. Especially for this class, the "Trends" part of Mintel should be very useful!

Mintel Reports+Trends This link opens in a new window
In-depth market research & trends reports. Consumer products focus: brands/products, lifestyles, some finance & tech. US & Europe. The finance and culture & identity modules contain finance, sustainable consumer, and diversity, equity & inclusion reports. Each user must create a personal account using a UR email address.
Trends module adds analysis of consumer trends & how they align with business applications.
FirstResearch This link opens in a new window
Includes industry reports for consumer products, technology, and most U.S. industries.
IBISWorld This link opens in a new window
Industry research reports; US & Global. Search by keyword or NAICS code. Market size, competitors, forecasts, valuation, & more. Includes Industry Wizard. The U.S. Spotlight Industry Report collection offers titles focused on ultra-niche industry categories that feature insights in condensed format focused on providing more charts, tables, and graphs
MarketLine GlobalData Intelligence Centers This link opens in a new window
This database provides access to Industry (reports by country), Company, and Country reports, plus Company News, Financial Deals, and Case Studies, Market size, segmentation, competition, and forecasts. MarketLine Explorer capitalizes on actionable intelligence spanning 22 global industries. Combining macroeconomic data and information on thousands of companies, Explorer offers detailed coverage of the global trends that are shaping industries, impacting companies, and driving innovation.
At the login screen, click on IP Access.
Additional modules within MarketLine:
Financial Deals Tracker: Track market activity with MarketLine's database of global mergers and acquisitions (M&A), private equity deals, venture finance deals, private placements, IPOs, and partnerships.
Company Prospector: Screen companies and build lists of potential business partners, clients, and investment targets in industries and countries of interest.
Investment & Advisory Prospector: Identify advisory & investment firms operating in specific industries, and gain insight into the investment and inorganic strategy of companies.
Company Report Generator: Generate fresh custom company reports featuring analytical text and charts which draw on MarketLine's company datasets. Example sections include company overview, history, SWOT analysis, M&A, partnerships and agreements, news and product information.
Gartner This link opens in a new window
Contains reports on the IT industry and the impact of IT on businesses. Search by market, topic, or industry.

eBooks on Social Media market research
Quick and easy way to get a sense of the wealth of electronic books available to you on all aspects of social media as a market research tool.
All Industry & Market Research Databases
Use this link to get to a complete list of all the databases available for industry and market research.

You might also want to figure out if there are any companies already doing what you're thinking of, or something close to it. The following databases are listed in order of company *size* that they cover: from smallest to largest.

CB Insights This link opens in a new window
Private company and investor database: deals, financing, M&As. Search by funding round or amount, location, name, industry, etc.
Each user must create a login using a UR email address.
PrivCo This link opens in a new window
Private company profiles and financial data (revenue, income statement, balance sheet, etc.), venture capital funding deals and investors, M&A, more.
Each user must create a login using a UR email address.
Yes – you CAN get financial data for private companies! Also very useful for creating lists of companies by geography, industry – with more granular detail than by NAICS or SIC, although those are available as well – rate of growth in revenue or employees, and whether or not the companies are PE/VC backed or not. Useful for career searches or entrepreneurial searches (who else makes this product? How many [x] are located within 50 miles of [place]? Etc.)
Reference Solutions via Data Axle This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive company/residential directory; build lists using 30 variables or Map Based Search. Includes consumer demographics and historical business data.
Reference Solutions is a series of databases from Data Axle, the largest business and residential data compiler in the US. Data is updated on a monthly basis and telephone verified for accuracy, and geocoded. Users can build lists of companies using more than 30 selections such as geography, industry, and employee size. Users can pinpoint their geographical parameters using Reference Solutions' Map Based Search feature which allows radii and polygons to be formed, allowing for the study of very specific areas. Data breakdowns can also be viewed in exportable graphs, charts and heat maps. Plus, the U.S. Historical Businesses database provides 10 years of historical data. Reference Solutions also maintains a database for US Consumers to allow the study of consumer demographics compiled at the individual level. The new US Jobs database is updated hourly with content on current job and internship postings.
OneSource This link opens in a new window
20M+ companies, US/int’l; financials, SWOT analysis, analyst reports, news articles. Search by region, sector, business size, more

Tweezing market or industry research information out of articles

If you can't find a report specifically on your company/product/industry in our market and industry research databases, you may have to comb the article databases for articles about your company/product/industry, and scan them for data: a statistic here, a percentage there. Yeah, I know, it's a lot more work! Here are your 4 best bets for business articles, in the order in which I would try them:

ABI/INFORM Complete This link opens in a new window
Articles from academic business journals and business trade publications; plus industry reports, some market data, and company profiles from the Experian Commercial Risk database.
For alumni access, see link to Proquest Alumni Edition on the Alumni Library Gateway.
Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Contains articles, company and industry reports, marketing reports, and country reports. Includes Harvard Business Review.
Factiva This link opens in a new window
Contains articles on business, news, and companies worldwide, current and historical financial quotes, and company profiles.

Factiva Search Tips
Improve your search experience in Factiva with these useful tips. Really. You NEED to look at this, trust me!

Business Plans Handbook This link opens in a new window
Includes templates for business plans for start-up companies in a wide range of U.S. industries
Entrepreneurship This link opens in a new window
To get to the business plan samples, after connecting, click "Browse" in the series of links just below the database name, then scroll down to "Start-up Tools" on the Browse page.
Click the Browse option to access these specific topics: Business Cases; Business Plan Samples; Business Start-Up; Company Profiles; Funding Sources; Guides, Templates and Tools; Legal Issues; Management and Leadership; Marketing and Sales; Operations Management; Profit and Financial Management; Product Development and Management; Special Topics; and Tips and Advice video clips.

Business Plan Books
This link takes you to a list of books on business plans - many of them are electronic; no trip to the library necessary.

EDGAR - U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission This link opens in a new window
EDGAR, the Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval system, is the primary system for companies and others submitting documents under the Securities Act of 1933, the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, and the Investment Company Act of 1940.

Containing millions of company and individual filings, EDGAR processes about 3,000 filings per day, serves up 3,000 terabytes of data to the public annually, and accommodates 40,000 new filers per year on average.

Historical Annual Report Collection (1876--2013)
This link takes you to the list of (index to) this entire collection of annual reports in PDF format. This collection represents all the companies that were public at any point in US history (or at least almost all; there may be gaps). Use your browser's Find in Page function to search for a company name; the PDF links appear at the end of each line. This is a large file; be patient while it loads.

WRDS: Advanced Analytical Tools

The below databases. all available from the Wharton Research Data Service (WRDS) platform, have just recently been made available to the entire University community. While they are primarily used by financial analysts to perform complex stock and company data analyses, some may also be useful for less extensive business data and investment research as well. Note that unlike the other databases in this guide, these all require signing up directly with the database for a special account.

CRSP

The Center for Research in Security Prices (CRSP) maintains the most comprehensive collection of security price, return, and volume data for the NYSE, AMEX and Nasdaq stock markets. Additional CRSP files provide stock indices, beta- and cap-based portfolio, treasury bond and risk-free rates, and mutual fund databases.