This fact-filled guide serves as an introductory handbook or as a refresher for those who want to research a specific topic or update their research skills. The good news is that more business information is available than ever before. But for those drowning in a plethora of data, that is also the bad news. How to Find Business Information: A Guide for Businesspeople, Investors, and Researchers extends a lifeline to those inundated souls, offering sage advice about locating what one needs easily, quickly, and from trustworthy sources. Encompassing print and digital materials, journals (both online and print), online databases, reference materials, and websites, this handbook will prove invaluable to anyone who finds it necessary to research business information. The tips and tactics it offers can, of course, be used by investors, but also by those seeking information about possible business partners, potential clients and customers, or sources of goods and services. Topics covered include banking and finance, economics, company information, industry information, marketing, accounting and taxation, and management, in short, everything one needs to know to make sound business and investment decisions.

In addition to offering her own hard-won expertise, Phelps shares advice and techniques from her fellow business researchers. You'll learn proven strategies for finding quality information about local business and economic conditions, issues, and outlooks. Visit the book's companion website at ResearchOnMainStreet.com for links, updates, and more. --Book Jacket.

#1 New York Times Bestseller Legendary venture capitalist John Doerr reveals how the goal-setting system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) has helped tech giants from Intel to Google achieve explosive growth—and how it can help any organization thrive. In the fall of 1999, John Doerr met with the founders of a start-up whom he'd just given $12.5 million, the biggest investment of his career. Larry Page and Sergey Brin had amazing technology, entrepreneurial energy, and sky-high ambitions, but no real business plan. For Google to change the world (or even to survive), Page and Brin had to learn how to make tough choices on priorities while keeping their team on track. They'd have to know when to pull the plug on losing propositions, to fail fast. And they needed timely, relevant data to track their progress—to measure what mattered. Doerr taught them about a proven approach to operating excellence: Objectives and Key Results. He had first discovered OKRs in the 1970s as an engineer at Intel, where the legendary Andy Grove ("the greatest manager of his or any era") drove the best-run company Doerr had ever seen. Later, as a venture capitalist, Doerr shared Grove's brainchild with more than fifty companies. Wherever the process was faithfully practiced, it worked. In this goal-setting system, objectives define what we seek to achieve; key results are how those top-priority goals will be attained with specific, measurable actions within a set time frame. Everyone's goals, from entry level to CEO, are transparent to the entire organization. The benefits are profound. OKRs surface an organization's most important work. They focus effort and foster coordination. They keep employees on track. They link objectives across silos to unify and strengthen the entire company. Along the way, OKRs enhance workplace satisfaction and boost retention. In Measure What Matters, Doerr shares a broad range of first-person, behind-the-scenes case studies, with narrators including Bono and Bill Gates, to demonstrate the focus, agility, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred at so many great organizations. This book will help a new generation of leaders capture the same magic.

If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

In Analysing Quantitative Survey Data, Jeremy Dawson introduces you to the key elements of analysing quantitative survey data using classical test theory, the measurement theory that underlies the techniques described in the book. The methodological assumptions, basic components and strengths and limitations of this analysis are explained and with the help of illustrative examples, you are guided through how to conduct the key procedures involved, including reliability analysis, exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Ideal for Business and Management students reading for a Master’s degree, each book in the series may also serve as reference books for doctoral students and faculty members interested in the method. Part of SAGE’s Mastering Business Research Methods series, conceived and edited by Bill Lee, Mark N. K. Saunders and Vadake K. Narayanan and designed to support researchers by providing in-depth and practical guidance on using a chosen method of data collection or analysis.

This series covers the federal, state, and local regulations imposed on small businesses, with concise, friendly and up-to-the-minute advice on each critical step of starting your own business.

In times of recession, the library is more critical than ever for those who want to start a business and need to do research, and libraries are at the heart of a growing need to research business questions.

"Information Systems for Business and Beyond introduces the concept of information systems, their use in business, and the larger impact they are having on our world."--BC Campus website.