Research guides: Entrepreneurship: Impact Gaps Canvas

Impact Gaps Canvas

"The Impact Gaps Canvas was designed to help people learn about a problem before jumping in to try to solve it"

This guide is designed as a guide and resource to support your use of the Impact Gaps Canvas. The quote above is from TacklingHeropreneurship.com, a site made by canvas creator Daniela Papi-Thornton at the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Oxford University.

Please visit that site to download a copy of the canvas:

The Impact Gaps Canvas: Tackling Heropreneurship
Learn about the Impact Gaps Canvas, read the Tackling Heropreneurship report, download a canvas and more.

Researching Your Canvas

Understanding the context and background for an issue or problem before jumping in to solve it is the basic purpose of the canvas. Mapping this ecosystem or landscape also requires some research!

Start by mapping out your concepts to identify your keywords, synonyms and related concepts. If you need help generating these, use the Concept Mapping worksheet below.

Topic/prompt	Concept 1	Concept 2	Concept 3	Concept 4
Challenge	COVID-19	vaccine	inequality	Toronto
Synonyms	coronavirus	immunization, inoculation, jab, shot	access, barrier, disproportion, disparity	"City of Toronto" GTA, "Greater Toronto Area"
Related words	pandemic, virus	injection, booster, Pfizer, Moderna, AZ	rollout, uptake, hesitancy	Ontario, community, neighbourhood, hotspot, postal codes

Concept mapping and synthesis worksheet
Use this worksheet to identify your search concepts, develop synonyms and related terms to structure your search.

Workshop Jamboard
Use this shared document to record and share your work.

Critically Evaluating Sources

When searching for information to complete your canvas, evaluate the sources you find. RADAR is a useful mnemonic:

R = Relevance: How relevant is the information to your topic?
A = Authority: Who/what is the source (author, publisher) of the information?
D = Date: When was the information first published or last updated?
A = Appearance: What does the source of information look like?
R = Reason or purpose: Why was the information published in the first place?

Adapted from: Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of Information Science, 39(4), 470–478,

Example article - Canadian Feed the Children
Evaluate the article using the RADAR mnemonic. Would you trust this article as a source? Why or why not?

Library Resources (UTORid required)

Canadian Business & Current Affairs Database: Business This link opens in a new window
Full-text access to research providing a Canadian perspective on topics including agriculture, business and economics, education, government and politics, health sciences, history, literature, medical sciences, social sciences, and more
Canadian Newsstream This link opens in a new window
Full text access to English language Canadian Newspapers.
Indigenous Studies Portal This link opens in a new window
Full-text articles, ebooks, theses, and government publications, with a primary focus on Indigenous peoples of Canada and a secondary focus on North American materials and beyond.

UTL Library Search
Search the U of T Libraries for articles or book chapters online using the "Everything" search, or Advanced Search function.

Open Web Resources

Directory of Associations
Searchable international directory to find associations and groups on a topic or issue.
Google Advanced Search
Extra search fields provide more control and specificity when searching.
Public Health Ontario
Research and data on a variety of health and related topics in Ontario.
Toronto 211
Use Toronto 211 to build a list of services by topic and neighbourhood or region.
Toronto Public Library - Databases A - Z
A searchable list of databases to find business profiles, news media articles, academic research articles and more.
UN Sustainable Development Goals
Adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership.

Gerstein Science Information Centre

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship Librarian

Impact Gaps Canvas

"The Impact Gaps Canvas was designed to help people learn about a problem before jumping in to try to solve it"

Researching Your Canvas

Critically Evaluating Sources

Library Resources (UTORid required)

Open Web Resources

Synthezising Information

Library links

Libraries

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