The Tools Today
We use an expanded list of corporate level tools today that extend beyond the initial set we used when we started the program. It should be noted that Economic Gardening is not about a specific set of tools but rather the best tools available at any given time. Over the 25 years in Littleton we added and dropped tools as newer and better means became available. Today that set includes commercial database services, geographic information systems, digital marketing (including internet marketing, search engine optimization, keyword research), listening posts, network mapping and intelligence research. A short description of each follows.
Commercial Database Services
There are a number of commercial database services available on a subscription basis. A service will typically will have a collection of databases around specific topics (aerospace, medicine, manufacturing, etc.). A given database will assemble articles from newspapers, magazines, trade journals, industry publications, newsletters, internal documents and other specialized sources. Thus, it is possible to search literally millions of articles using specialized terms (marketing, R&D, finance) to assemble a variety of pieces of information from different sources, different time periods and different places in the world to spot patterns.
Database searching differs from Internet searching in several significant ways:
- The information comes primarily from print publications and thus is full text from a number of long established, reliable sources.
- The information is coded into standard categories so that when it is retrieved, the number of unrelated hits is much lower
- The information is expensive, sometimes running several dollars for minutes online.
The number of commercial database services is extensive and cover a number of categories:
- Company profiles
- Industry reports and trends
- Business News
- Market studies
- Executive profiles
- Marketing lists
- Real estate
- Customized research
Database searching is the oldest tool we use and its broad spectrum robustness has kept it on our tools list every year.