Management Essentials MGT 1102

How innovative is your product?

Before your team gets a green light to develop your idea for new product or service, you need to do some due diligence to make sure your concept hasn't already been brought to market by someone else. We've created a video on how to search trade publications for new product announcements and Mintel's GNPD.

Got Patents?

We've created a video explaining how to search patents. Searching patents is a highly technical field, but you're likely to need to take a shot at it for a few reasons:

• to compare your new product or innovation to similar ideas
• to identify competitors
• to get ideas about how to draft product specifications to put out to bid for potential suppliers
• to identify owners of patented components you may need to license.

Where do you begin?  Market Research!

In most business research, market reports and industry surveys are the equivelant of encyclopedia articles.  They provide context, offer benchmarks, describe trends and competitive forces, and offer forecasts.  They are a great place to start your research.

Each of the market and industry report databases listed on the sidebar may be browsed for content or searched by keywords.   To use Mintel, you have to accept the terms of use and create a user profile. 

Financial Benchmarks

To establish financial targets and benchmarks for your startup you will need to use a peer group comparable to your own in both size and industry or market.  Finding financial norms for large publically traded firms is relatively easy as it is for market sectors.  However for this project, you will be better served by using the norms for smaller firms in terms of  assets.  Three print sources and the database BizMiner listed on the sidebar provide the benchmarks you need.

To find the industry or product class closest to your own, you will have to identify it's SIC (Standard Industrial Classification) or NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) code.  The SIC codes were originally developed by the U.S. in the 1930's to classify businesses by academic activity for the Economic Census.  Some 60 years later NAICS, an entirely new classification system, was devised to facilitate comparability with NAFTA members Canada and Mexico and to accomodate new industries.  Troy's, RMA, D&B and BizMiner use these classification systems.  Each has tables leading to SIC or NAICS codes or you can use the US Census Bureau's online index and correspondence tables.