I have finished all of my research! After reading and annotating 15 sources I am now done with all the research and have gathered all the information needed to accurately evaluate businesses in my study. Now it is time to go out into the community to get businesses to join my study and fill out my survey. These next few weeks will consist of gathering information and while I am doing that there will be very little to do at school. Because of that I am going to begin to set up a baseline for what qualifies a business as successful in a very broad sense. With that it will be easier to evaluate the results I get.
The last two weeks I have spent hours researching what it is that makes a successful business. I have been looking at everything from 30 page Restaurant Industry Reports to websites with helpful tips like Entrepreneur.com. From the 15 sources I have looked at so far I have gotten a bunch of great information. My findings include things like, five employees all businesses should have, how to make a good marketing strategy, what makes a good leader, what the state of the business owner is, how the food industry is growing, the technology a business need to prepare for the future, and many other great bits of information. All this information I have put into two different surveys, one for the owners and one for the employees. Something I decided to do with the surveys is that I am going to ask both the owners and employees similar questions to see if they are all on the same page or if the owners are thinking they are doing one thing, but their employees feel totally different. This research aspect has been incredibly helpful to me because I feel like I am now close to ready to begin evaluating businesses on my own.
On Tuesday the 30th our class and the Global Studies class all met to discuss our topics in the form of speed dating. We had four minutes with another person to discuss and formulate new ideas of our topics. I found the exercise really productive because it both raised an interest in my project and gave me new ideas to try to incorporate into my work. My peers had some excellent suggestions for me, some of their ideas included, look at the demand for a business' product, look at how location affects the business, and then do the businesses even offer a quality product. All of those ideas are things I might try to include while I am conducting my research. Along with getting great suggestions I was also able to get a few people to volunteer their families small businesses which was a great bonus. Not only did I get great ideas I think I was able to give some good feedback to my peers which they could use to better their work. The speed dating exercise was a great way to have some other people look at my ideas and for me to check out what other people are doing. The next time we do it we will have solidified our projects so it will be great to see what people say about what we have done.
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