Posted: May 27th, 2008 by cflyons
As a GA working in the UB Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach, here are some resources from the UB Libraries that can assist you with your research:
- Companies… find information about companies and identify comparable companies and competitors
- News… learn about recent trends and developments
- Industries… get overviews of the various facets of an industry and get a sense of the size of the market
- Journal literature… explore business topics in an in-depth manner
- Data… Obtain statistics, rankings, market share,etc
1. Company Information…
Company profiles with quantitative and qualitative info. Find competitors and major players in an industry. Remember the 3 factors that determine the difficulty of company research: public -vs- private, US -vs- non US, parent -vs- subsidiary.
- Best bet… Hoovers
- See also… OneSource, ReferenceUSA
2. News Articles…
Technology industries are continually emerging and evolving — this makes them difficult to research. Keep current with recent trends with industries and companies by monitoring the news media.
- Best bet… Factiva (includes the Wall Street Journal, Barrons, and many other primary business publications)
- See also… LexisNexis
3. Industry Overviews and Reports…
Research from the best tech-related research firms is expensive and hard to come by: Gartner, Forrester, IDC, Frost & Sullivan, Nielsen / NetRatings, Jupiter, and lots of other specialized sources. Here’s what we have access to at UB.
- Best bet… IBIS World
4. Academic Journal Literature…
- Best bet… Business SourceComplete (includes journal articles plus Datamonitor reports, market research, eBooks, country profiles, more)
- See also… other business journal databases are ABI Inform Global and Business & Company ASAP. For a science and technology focus, try ScienceDirect, ACM Digital Library or IEEE Xplore.
5. Rankings, Statistics and Other Data
- Best bet… TableBase
6. Internet Resources…
Some resources from the free web:
- Research… IBM Research, USC Annenberg’s Center for the Digital Future, Pew Internet and American Life Project, RAND, ClickZ Stats, Morgan Stanley’s tech research.
- Magazines… Technology Review (MIT), HBS Working Knowledge’s Technology Industry, CIO, Business 2.0, Fast Company, Wired.
- Lists… 100 Fastest Growing Tech Companies (CNN Money), Deloitte Technology Fast 500, InfoTech 100 (BusinessWeek), Fastest Growing Techs (Forbes), Canadian Business Tech 100.











