Glossary

Terms

TAM, SAM and SOM

TAM, SAM and SOM are three nested market-size estimates: the total market, the part you can serve, and the share you can realistically win.

Desk research

Desk research is the analysis of existing published sources, such as reports, filings, government data and news, instead of new data collection.

Primary research

Primary research is data you collect yourself, such as survey responses, interviews, focus groups or usability tests, for the question at hand.

Deep research agent

A deep research agent is an AI system that plans a set of searches, reads many sources and returns a long written report with citations.

Citation check

A citation check confirms that a cited source exists and actually supports the specific claim it is attached to.

Hallucination

A hallucination is a fluent, confident AI output that is false or is not supported by any real source.

NAICS codes

NAICS codes are the industry classification codes used by US federal statistical agencies, and they are a common key for finding industry data.

Competitive intelligence

Competitive intelligence is the ongoing, legal collection and analysis of information about rivals, such as their prices, products, hiring and positioning.

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