Research Guides: Entreprenuership: Best Bets

Introduction

This guide supports entrepreneurial research connected to FSU's JMC curriculum, co-curricular activities such as the Big Idea Competition and any FSU-affiliated business mentoring program. This guide is only a start to the diversity of resources available in the FSU entreprenuerial ecosystem.

Through this guide, you can access the following kinds of resources:

Datasets, reports and articles supporting industry analysis, company and market research
Standards, Technical Reports and Prototyping information for product development
Patents and other intellectual property research resources
Pitch, financing, and legal resources and guides for business planning

For information and resources for Pittsburgh entrepreneurs, please visit our Resources for Community Entrepreneurs Libguide

Best Bets for Starting

Entrepreneurship (Gale Business) This link opens in a new window
Gale Business: Entrepreneurship is a comprehensive database that covers all aspects of starting and operating a business, including accounting, finance, human resources, management, marketing, tax, and more. It combines authoritative periodical and reference content to support prospective and current entrepreneurs as well as business students. 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.
Abbreviation: sbrc
Vendor: Gale
Subjects: Accounting, Business, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Management & Strategy, Marketing, Risk Management
Type: Citation Management, Directories, E-Journal Collections, Encyclopedias & Dictionaries, Newspapers and Newswires, Streaming Video
Statista This link opens in a new window
Statista is a leading provider of market and consumer data. Statista consolidates statistical data on over 80,000 topics from more than 22,500 sources.
Abbreviation: stati
Vendor: Statista
Subjects: Business, Communication, Demography and Population Studies, Economics, Hospitality, Marketing, Public Health, Urban and Regional Planning
Type: Datasets / Statistics
IBISWorld Industry Market Research This link opens in a new window
A collection of Industry Market Research and Industry Risk Ratings. Coverage includes over 700 U.S. industries in over 1100 industry-specific reports. Research reports contain trends, statistics and analysis on market size, market share of competitors, forecasting, and industry growth rates. Performance analysis includes emerging trends, recent production performance and 5-year forecasts. The US Specialized Industry Reports series covers niche industries such as pawn shops, boat insurance companies, air gun manufacturers and circus operators.
Abbreviation: ibisworld
Vendor: IBISWorld
Subjects: Business, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Hospitality, Marketing
Type: Reports
Business Source Complete This link opens in a new window
Business Source Complete is the world's definitive 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 1,200 journals, Business Source Complete contains detailed author profiles for the 20,000 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, non-journal 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 and more.
Abbreviation: bscomp
Vendor: EBSCO
Coverage: 1886–Current
Subjects: Business, Business Legal Studies, Communication, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Hospitality, Insurance, Management & Strategy, Marketing, Real Estate, Retail Entrepreneurship, Sport Management, Urban and Regional Planning
Type: Datasets / Statistics, E-Book Collections, E-Journal Collections, Encyclopedias & Dictionaries, Proceedings, Reports
ABI/INFORM Collection This link opens in a new window
Documents in ABI/INFORM Collection (the most comprehensive version of ABI/INFORM) number over 40 million. Over 90% of the articles can be found right in the database. For the remaining 10%, summaries and links to other resources are provided. Publications are precisely indexed and various search aids and tools are provided in the ProQuest platform to help users find information. Tools for citation generation, emailing and printing articles of interest are also provided on the platform.
Subjects include:
Business
Economic conditions
Corporate strategies
Management theory
Management techniques
Business trends
Competitive landscape and product information
Accounting
Finance

Tutorials:
Introduction to ABI/INFORM Collection (PowerPoint)
Overview of ABI Market Research Sources (PowerPoint)
Tip for Teaching: ABI/INFORM Collection Uncovering SWOT Analyses (03:51 minutes)

Set up a My Research Account in ProQuest to save documents, searches, alerts and more (go to the top right corner of any ProQuest database).

ABI/INFORM Trade & Industry- Features limited content compared to the Browse Search in ABI/INFORM Complete
ABI/INFORM Dateline- Browse Search not included
ABI/INFORM Global- features limited content compared to the Browse Search in ABI/INFORM Complete

Abbreviation: abi-com
Vendor: ProQuest
Subjects: Accounting, Business, Business Legal Studies, Communication, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Finance, Hospitality, Insurance, Real Estate, Risk Management, Urban and Regional Planning
Type: Indexes / Catalogs