Entrepreneurship is the process of creating a vision of a new product and service and bringing it to market. In addition to the initial idea, it requires extensive research on existing and potential markets.
You must create a profile using your vt.edu email address to use the database. Gale Small Business Builder provides step-by-step planning for starting, managing, and optimizing a small business. It uses a dashboard as you walk through 5 areas to develop a business plan through wizards and templates. It integrates with the other 3 Gale entrepreneur databases.
IBISWorld provides 3 types of business reports: Industry Market Research: Reports (PDF) on over 700 US industries arranged by 5-digit NAICS code, typically 25-50 pages in length with executive summaries, updated regularly; Business Environment: Data and analysis (PDF and Word) on 200+ economic and demographic statistics, around 300 key business environment indicators; and Specialized Industry Reports of over 600 titles also arranged by NAICS code that contain the same chapters and format as the Core US Industry Reports, but encompass niche and emerging industries with a focus on technology, healthcare, consumer goods, and other fast-growing sectors.
IBISWorld provides a comprehensive collection of industry market research reports. Industry Research Reports are powerful business tools that provide strategic insight and analysis on over 700 U.S. industries. Each industry report is written at the 5-digit NAICS level - an unparalleled degree of detail. The reports are updated frequently, which gives you the confidence to make accurate and speedy business decisions.
Each report includes 9 chapters, and 34 sub-chapters that provide insight into current and forecast industry performance, changing trends, operating conditions and supply chain linkages.
Every industry faces a set of variables outside its control that have a material effect on industry performance. These factors, which include exchange rates, commodity prices, consumer attitudes, weather conditions, government policies among others are covered by our extensive range of business environment reports. Understanding these factors makes it easier to predict trends for your business and competitors.
So, what are the key factors outside the control of your organisation that determine the performance of your industry? Find out in our brief summaries within our industry research reports, or use our business environment reports as a supplement to acquire a deeper understanding of these trends. Our two-to-three-page business environment reports provide insights into all the demographic, environmental and business trends that you can’t afford to ignore.
MarketLine provides searchable company, industry, and country information. Includes industry profiles (with size, segmentation, and competitive analysis); company profiles of 50,000 public and private companies; country profiles; three databases (base drivers, consumer markets, financial deals); as well as news, comment, and analysis.
Access to this resource ends June 2021. Small Business Resource Center covers all aspects of starting and operating a business, including accounting, finance, human resources, management, marketing, tax, and more. Experience an easy-to-browse interface mapped to four key stages—plan, fund, start, and manage—to fit your research needs at any point in your business's development. Small Business Resource Center features the entire Business Plans Handbook series, which contains hundreds of sample business plans created by real-life entrepreneurs. New plans are added monthly.
Demographics Now provides demographic data on more than 24 million U.S. businesses and 206 million consumers. Choose a business location, research competitors, analyze market size, build direct marketing lists, profile current and potential customers, forecast trends, and uncover consumer buying patterns.
The USPTO Patent Full-Text and Image Database indexes information about patents, plus provides full text of patents since 1976 and full-page images of all patents in TIFF format. 1790-present.
The database consists includes information about all US patents (including utility, design, reissue, plant patents and SIR documents) from the first patent issued in 1790 to the most recent issue week. Patents from January 1976 to the present offer the full searchable text, including all bibliographic data, such as the inventor's name, the patent's title, and the assignee's name; the abstract; the full description of the invention; and the claims.& The display of each patent's full-text includes a hyperlink to obtain full-page images of each page of the patent. Information from Certificates of Correction and Reexaminations is not included in the full-text database per se, but can be found as full-page images appended to the full-page images of the original patent.
Patents from 1790 to December 1975 offer only the patent number, issue date, and current US patent classification in the text display, and can be searched only within those fields. However, this limited text display also includes a hyperlink to obtain full-page images of all pages of the patent.
You must have a properly configured Web browser with an image display plug-in capable of displaying TIFF images with T.6 (CCITT Group 4) compression.
MarketResearch.com provides market intelligence reports on consumer demographics, market size and growth trends, industry forces and structure, product trends, competitive environment analysis, and company profiles.
Mintel offers over 900 market research reports focused on the broad categories of: Beauty and Personal, Drink, Electronics, European Retail Intelligence, Food and Foodservice, Health and Medical, Health and Wellness, Household, Lifestyles, Retailing and Travel. The reports can be searched for product, brand name or keyword. When logging into the database, you must accept conditions of use and login with your email and a password that you create. You must use your Virginia Tech email for this system.
ABI/Inform indexes citations, abstracts, and full text news articles, market and SWOT analyses, industry reports, country reports, downloadable data sets, dissertations, business cases, working papers, annual reports from North American companies, and company profiles and histories. You can limit searches to peer-reviewed journals. Full text provided in HTML and PDF. 1971-present.
Business Source Complete is a citation, abstracts, and full-text database that indexes journals; books; financial data; reference works; conference proceedings; company, industry, investment, marketing, and country reports; SWOT analyses; and case studies. Full text is provides as HTML and PDF. You can limit to peer-reviewed sources. 1886-present; most content is 1980s-present.
Business Source Complete is a scholarly business database, providing the leading collection of bibliographic and full text content. As part of the comprehensive coverage offered by this database, indexing and abstracts for the most important scholarly business journals back as far as 1886 are included. In addition to the searchable cited references provided for more than 1,300 journals, Business Source Complete contains detailed author profiles for the 40,000 most-cited authors in the database. Journal ranking studies reveal that Business Source Complete is the overwhelmingly superior database for full text journals in all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics. Additional full text content includes financial data, books, monographs, major reference works, book digests, conference proceedings, case studies, investment research reports, industry reports, market research reports, country reports, company profiles, SWOT analyses, faculty seminars (videos), and more.
Factiva provides full-text news articles and business/industry information from newswires, newspapers, business and industry magazines, television and radio transcripts, financial reports, and photos from news services. Most content is HTML, though other formats are available for export. News sources 1979-present; financial data 1960s-present.
Factiva provides full-text news articles and business information. From the Search tab, use the Free Text search box to explore an archive of over 50 years of news and other sources.
From the News Pages tab, you can browse current issues of major newspapers and business magazines from around the world.
From the Companies/Markets tab, you can research competitors, suppliers, customers, and partners through market data, interactive charts, financial statements, and more for individual companies or industries. Data includes current and historical pricing on a variety of financial instruments like stocks, funds, currencies, and market indexes.
Provides company, industry, and country reports for active and inactive, public and some private companies. Reports provided in PDF and can be exported as Word or Excel files. It includes 15 years of financial statement. Now includes the Mergent Horizons and Investext Snapshot databases.
Search database for trademark registrations and applications by mark, owner, or serial/registration number with Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS)
All current Virginia Tech students, faculty, and staff, regardless of your location, may request through ILLiad for materials:
not owned by Virginia Tech (books, articles from journals and conference proceedings, book chapters, standards, and technical papers)
owned by Virginia Tech but are unavailable for use (print books)
owned by Virginia Tech and available in print (scans of articles from journals and conference proceedings, book chapters, standards, and technical papers)
We ship requests via UPS to users outside the immediate Blacksburg area (Montgomery, Giles and Pulaski counties).
Articles, book chapters, and many technical papers are delivered in PDF format to your ILLiad account. Occasionally, due to copyright restrictions, a paper copy of an article or standard are sent to the mailing address listed on your account.