A round-up of private equity and venture capital industry information sources
22nd August 2012

The private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) industries are information intensive, generating numerous data on companies, funds, investment firms, and investment performance. These data are typically available on a subscription-basis, and sold to industry participants for due diligence, competitive intelligence, analysis, and business development purposes. Several publishers and industry associations also provide market information for free. This article outlines what information professionals can find from subscription and free sources, as well as a short look at a new social networking site for the PE industry.

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Benchmarking: Information Structure
22nd August 2012

Every organisation takes a slightly unique approach to defining what it means by "information services", and yet in every organisation the same information-related jobs need to get done. This analysis of staff size, supported headcount, and arrangement of duties shows several important differences based on industry.

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Product review of Thomson Innovation: Executive Summary
20th August 2012

Patent searching is an art, and Thomson Innovation makes it an art that almost any researcher can successfully try. An unmatched content set covering documentation from around the world and incorporating the deep pool of Thomson Reuters' related content in legal, intellectual property and business information resources is placed within an interface that is powerful yet not intimidating. Reviewer David Whelan emerged researching the product with admiration for the overall offering and some useful guidance for information professionals seeking to get it into the hands of end users.

Update: A new review of this product is available here »

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Thomson Innovation: Help and customer accounts
20th August 2012

Online and offline help elements are important in evaluating how a product might fit into the regular workflow of staff. David Whelan rounds out his review of Thomson Innovation with a discussion of available help options, costs and account management.

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Thomson Innovation: Outputs: reports and alerts
20th August 2012

Once search is complete, how else can you work with Thomson Innovation results? Reviewer David Whelan shares what he's learned about download and printing options as well as ongoing alerting.

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Thomson Innovation: Special functionality
16th August 2012

The special features built into Thomson Innovation give this product a lot to be proud of: Reviewer David Whelan particularly likes the visualisation and charting tools, text clustering and other features that enable a user to derive meaning from especially large data sets. The multilingual capabilities of the product are also impressive. Asian intellectual property documents benefit from user interface features designed to help users better search and manipulate documents in Japanese.

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Thomson Innovation: User interface
16th August 2012

In late 2011, Thomson Innovation received a full facelift in its user interface. Reviewer David Whelan explores the useful aspects of the interface and points out how it differs from what customers might have been used to -- either on previous iterations of this product or on other patent search products.

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Thomson Innovation: Search and output options
16th August 2012

Powerful search functions sit behind a clean interface in Thomson Innovation. Reviewer David Whelan explains the process of searching, variables the user can control, approaches to setting up and repeating searches, and the various ways the product delivers results.

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Making sense of the deluge that is Big Data
16th August 2012

"Big data" is the buzzword of 2012, but what does it really mean for most of us? Sarah Hinton provides a practical guide to thinking about the role of big data, where it may come into play in research or corporate information practice, and how to stay informed on this topic as it continues to evolve.

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What to do when your information scent stinks!
15th August 2012

If you manage an intranet or website you'll know how important it is to ensure that any links you incorporate make it clear what they're going to open. Usually these are visual or textual clues that suggest to the reader what the link contains. But what happens when these clues or your information scent stinks and what can you do about it?

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