Market research

• Market research is an important skill/tool for innovation and entrepreneurship - you use it to find useful information about the market, the industry, competition, and potentially even map users/buyers/stakeholders
• You can do market research through all types of channels/sources, such as news publications, company annual reports, websites of competitors, publications of trade associations or industry groups, market research done by other entities, academic publications, government sources, your interviews with experts, etc.
• Leverage the library and reference librarians to help you hone your market research skills and find the information you need

Understanding competition/existing products

• You want to understand what existing products customers use to address their needs - they are your competition
• At this stage, you want to know why these existing solutions do not address customers’ needs well, what may be areas that they do work well, what customers these products target, and how successful these products have been (are they scaled, how fast have they been growing, what geographic market they are in, etc.), and potentially how much they cost and how customers access them (how customers buy them, how they are delivered to the customers)
• When you progress to or advance within the Innovation Pathway, you would want to spend more time to learn even more about your competition to help inform the design of your solution
• When considering how to craft your “Competition” slide for your pitch deck, consider the points made in this article.