I was researching a certain industry vertical the other day. I was trying to decide if I should start learning more about it, becoming more knowledgeable, and acquiring some domain knowledge so that I could target it and sell to it. There’s a lot of it where I live.

So I went onto the web to get the skinny on the sector. What’s it really like? What makes it tick? How does it really work? What are the drivers, the things that affect its shape, size and speed?

I couldn’t find anything useful on the web. Nothing that gives you the inside track on the sector. Not even wikipedia. Not necessarily how big the sector is and how many players are in it, but how does it really work? What’s it all about? Is it worth getting into?

I wondered why it’s so hard to find a couple hundred words that give you a steer on a sector you don’t know much about. Not an introduction to the industry that is a book in its own right, but something enlightening – a blog post perhaps – that takes 5 minutes to absorb. Is it too hard to do? Has no-one thought of it before? Can no-one be bothered to write it and make it easy to find?

In the end, I went the old fashioned route and asked someone from the sector to have a coffee with me, which will take a couple of weeks to schedule. If only I could have found the answer in a couple of minutes.