LibGuides: Entrepreneurship Research Guide: Generate Business Ideas

Idea Generation

Trade Magazines, newspapers, and technical literature are excellent places to get ideas, find habits of potential customers, find funding opportunities, and more!

ABI/Inform Complete This link opens in a new window
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The most comprehensive ABI/INFORM™ database, this comprises ABI/INFORM Global, ABI/INFORM Trade and Industry, and ABI/INFORM Dateline. The database features thousands of full-text journals, dissertations, working papers, key business and economics periodicals such as the Economist, country-and industry-focused reports, and downloadable data. Its international coverage gives researchers a complete picture of companies and business trends around the world
Business Source Premier This link opens in a new window
Business Source Premier is the industry’s most used business research database, providing full text for more than 2,300 journals, including full text for more than 1,100 peer-reviewed titles. This database provides full text back to 1886, and searchable cited references back to 1998. Business Source Premier is superior to the competition in full text coverage in all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, MIS, POM, accounting, finance and economics. This database is updated daily on EBSCOhost.
Wall Street Journal (Eastern Edition) This link opens in a new window
Full-text articles from the Wall Street Journal from 1984 to the present time.
New York Stock Exchange This link opens in a new window
The main web site of the New York Stock Exchange. Provides links to information about the exchange and listed companies.
First Research This link opens in a new window
First Research provides access to an online library of profiles on over 900 industry segments as well as state and regional profiles. The industry profiles contain critical analysis, statistics and forecasts. Note* you must click continue on the opening page, and then twice more to access the database*
Industry Norms and Key Business Ratios Archive This link opens in a new window
Browse a digital archive of Dunn & Bradstreet's Industry Norms & Key Business Ratios from 1979 through 2010 by year and/or industry group.
Key Business Ratios This link opens in a new window
Key Business Ratios (KBR) provides online access to competitive benchmarking data. This powerful tool lets researchers examine industry benchmarks compiled from D&B's database of public and private companies, featuring 14 key business ratios (users choose a one-year or three-year set of ratios) for public and private companies in 800 lines of business.
Mergent Intellect This link opens in a new window
Powered by D&B's Hoover's, Intellect provides access to private and public U.S and international business data, industry news, facts and figures, executive contact information, the ability to access industry profiles and much more. Also provides residential directory information searchable by person, business, phone number and neighboring listings. In addition, the Job Search function connects occupations to potential employers in the U.S., Mexico, and Canada while the Demographics search provides Nielsen demographic and PRIZM consumer segmentation data down to the zip code level.