This post is exclusively for students who are at the initial phase of their research projects but don’t know how to start!

                                            A good start is half the battle won – Anonymous

How to start!! This is the question which haunts majority of students. They waste considerable amount of their time just because they don’t have answer for this question. Here is the systematic guide to decide your research project:

Step 1: Choose the area of research: 

This is probably the easiest part as after the first year of MBA, majority of students knows their area of expertise. Some broadly classified streams can be:

                      1.       Marketing

             2.       Finance

             3.       Operations

             4.       Human Resource

             5.       Information Technology

             6.       Business Strategy

             7.       Statistics/Econometrics

             8.       Economics

             9.       Business Analytics

Step 2: Where to look for the information: Okay I know my area of research, then what?

This is the step where almost all the students spend 15-20 days or more as they simply don’t know where to get the required information. Here are some of the sources which can help:

1.       Project reports of seniors: You can easily find the list of topics on which your seniors had  done their projects .This is very useful source as they have worked on these projects for almost a year and thus can easily provide the seed for thought.

2.        Research papers and journals: Another valuable source to get the idea for your research  topic. Some of the sources for this can be-

·         IIT kgp digital library: http://www.library.iitkgp.ernet.in/

·         MIT Press: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/

·         Oxford Journals: http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/#J

·         ACM digital library: http://dl.acm.org/dl.cfm?CFID=124754103&CFTOKEN=73365922

·         Palgrave Journals: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/bm/index.html

·         EBSCO Databases: http://web.ebscohost.com

·         ACM Digital library: http://dl.acm.org/

3.       Current trends and topics: Current economic trends and general topics which are in the news recently.

4.       Live Projects: Make a list of the companies in your domain of expertise and try to get a live project from them. Live project is a very good source of learning industry standards and market environment.

Step 3: Research Question: 

Once you have narrowed down your domain of expertise, try to formulate the research question. Research question can take several forms but try to write it in the form of null hypothesis (For details of null hypothesis explore the chapter on Hypothesis testing-Statistics for Management by Levin Rubin).This adds objectivity to your research.

Step 4: Do the primary researches and feasibility analysis: 

Once you have written the research question do the primary researches on the topic. Do the feasibility analysis of the same; you don’t want to change your research topic after 1 month or so.

Step 5: Project design and planning: 

After finalizing the research question make a detailed project design i.e. how you will proceed, what is the scope of your research, methodology you will follow etc. Also Project Planning needs to be done at this stage, this will include questions like: What are the timelines, deliverables etc.

At this stage you can start with all heads up on your research project. Cheers!