Entrepreneurship & Innovation

A great resource to get a broad understanding of large industries within the United States. Use this as an introduction to industries to become more familiar with what’s happening in your prospective industry.

Use to identify and locate potential competitors in your industry.
Find companies and competitors by user-defined search criteria, such as size, location, industry, sales, and more.
Useful for private company information which includes estimated sales. Also includes demographic data by location.

Contains extensive company financials, filings, equity and industry reports, U.S. economic information, and much more.
Contains global company information, annual reports, EDGAR filings, current news stories, and some international industry reports.

Directory information for publicly and privately owned companies in the United States, as well as information about
consumer and business information including market information. Search by company name, type of business, geography, business size, and more. Formerly called ReferenceUSA.

"The Portal for Statistics," contains statistics and studies from over 22,500 sources. Especially useful in finding statistics for company, industry, and market information.
Use Statista to find statistics on companies, consumers, or the market size of the industry.
Search by company name or by industry topic.
For example, "fitness industry" or "wellness industry."

Use the 10-K filings (often called annual reports) of public companies within the industry. For example:
Look at the Business Summary and Risk Factors (Item 1 and 1A), which is where the company will describe industry challenges
Item 7, Management’s Discussion and Analysis, also gives the company's perspective on its business results and how it is doing within the industry.

For understanding U.S. markets, the U.S. Census data is the first place to start. It tracks fundamental characteristics of people and businesses over time and by geographical location down to the census tract level.
Data.census.gov is the new platform to access data and digital content from the U.S. Census Bureau. It replaces the American FactFinder website, which was retired in 2020.

Contains market research reports for specific consumer product categories. Covers US and some International marketplaces. Especially useful for consumer demographics, psychographics, buying behavior, motivations, and more.

Passport offers comprehensive coverage of international consumer markets, consumer lifestyles in other countries, economic statistics, demographic forecasting, and industry reports for most major markets and consumer products, and more.

U.S. business and residential telephone directories, with detailed business information. For “the white pages,” search the U.S. Consumers/Lifestyles database within Reference Solutions.

Provides demographic, business, or marketing data down to the local level, allowing users to create customized maps and reports with an almost unlimited number of variables.
Use to:
Analyze Census data at the city, state, zip code, or block group level
Use consumer data and demographics to understand consumer demand by location
Identify locations to open your business
Locate competitors in your local market
Create charts, maps, and tables with data.