To conclude this task, all you need is essentially a clear, precise, punctual and well-defined methodology of research. Here below you will find detailed instructions on how to create one:

• Prepare an excel file that will help in organising and managing your resources (i.e., files and documents) that might catch your attention while browsing the Web

• Separate the excel in columns. Each column will highlight the most important characteristic of the resources you might encounter:
  • Year of publication – the latest, the better (in general, it is recommended no older than 3 years)
  • Author/publishing organisation(s) – see point no. 4 for further details on which publishing source you should look into
  • Title of the report
  • Brief notes – the main takeaways from the document (i.e., statistics, percentages, critical lessons learned, etc)
  • URL

• Write down the three key words of your research, for instance:
  • “women”, “education” and “rural Europe” in the case your social business idea aims to empowering the literacy of females in disadvantaged and non-urbanised areas of EU territories
  • “digital skills”, “young people” and “employment” in the case your social business idea aims at empowering young people’s ICT proficiency to strengthen their opportunities for employability and professionalisation

Note: Key words are essential for your analysis as they will allow you to:

• navigate the Web more easily
• cluster and classify the relevancy of each of the document/report you will encounter (see point no. 6 for reference)

• Define a funnel of analysis and research. The information you need might typically be available from different kind of sources:
  • Large institutions
    • International level
    • European level
    • National level
  • Private sector
    • Usually, corporations ventures into the social dimension as beside their traditional corporate activities, they might carry on (and usually they do) national and/or international programmes inspired by social agendas
    • Labour associations and chambers of commerce are typically very active in social domains as they operate for the benefit of the labour market and economy
  • Third sector representatives and stakeholders that are related to the scope and scale of your proposal (i.e., groups of interest)
  • Academia and scholars in the research filed of social entrepreneurship phenomena

• Navigate the funnel of sources. You are recommended to navigate these sources by following a precise methodology. You want to be consistent with an approach that goes from the “macro” perspective to the “micro” phenomenology. The more we manage to narrow down our research, the more detailed the information that we gather. At the same time, we want to be sure that our dataset is as reliable as possible, supported by trustworthy references and robust conclusions.

Pleas find here below the funnel as it should be navigated:

• International Institutions. They typically represent the largest providers of evidence-based and worldwide datasets. Resources and information shared by these institutions are highly reliable and provide for a very useful background of reference.

All links that you are encouraged to look through are in the resources section.

Store your material and define a hierarchy of resources. In point no.3 we recommended you to pinpoint three key words of your social business idea. As we mentioned, not only this was intended to ease your browsing process, but to concretely help you in better organising and filtering your documents based on their actual relevancy.

Resources will be clustered following a specific methodology:

1^ST best – The title of the selected document contains all three keywords

2^nd best – The title of the selected document contains two out of the three keywords

3^rd best – The title of the selected document contains only one out of the three keywords

First and Second-best sources will represent the very core of your background analysis: build your wealth of knowledge starting from there, be critical and creative in your analysis, take note and highlight main takeaways.