Using NAICS & SIC Codes
The explosion of expertise driven by the knowledge and information revolution has created a new challenge both for those seeking experts and for experts who must effectively identify their own area of expertise. New expertise is growing at an exponential rate across every discipline and more granularly, within virtually every industry segment, often creating whole new areas of expertise that didn’t exist even a few years ago. That is why we recommend that Expert Users define their own markets and areas of expertise in part by using the NAICS and/or SIC codes. These codes were developed to define industry segments, based on products, primarily for the purpose of tracking economic data. As such, the codes are vast product listings yet they are often used by various professionals to define markets.
There are different strategies for applying the codes this way. We have developed our own strategy described in the following sections. In all cases, defining a market segment for your area of expertise requires that you define markets broadly enough to cover the full range of your expertise but not so broadly that you fail to differentiate yourself from others. There is no simply formula for doing this well. It requires more than anything else, that you apply your own knowledge and experience about the markets in which you work and a little common sense. Some areas of expertise apply accorss many industry segments, as for example, business management or soft skills training. Other areas of expertise are narrowly defined by the markets that address, such as Lean or Six Sigma which are commonly used in manufacturing. Still other areas of expertise may be very narrowly defined by specific markets, as for example media training, or film production.
In all cases, we also recommend that you also define your expertise using your own terminology or professional lexicon and we have provided a separate field in your profile for you to do that. Our search engine treats all the information in your profile as metadata so the more detailed you can be in describing yourself and your expertise the better.
NAICS Codes
The North American Industrial Classification (NAICS) is a collaborative effort by the United States Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Statistics Canada, and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Estad?´stica, Geografi?´a Informa´tica (INEGI), creating a numbering system using a six digit code based on industrial segment. The first five digits designate business sectors, going from the largest sector down to the smallest, particular industry group. The numbering system is based primarily on products and as such, provides one way to define market segments. As there are many other ways to go about defining market segments, and because the NACIS numbering system is so exhaustive (listing nearly 20,000 categories), we have provided our own guide to help you drill down into the code. Our guide is not an official guide nor is it endorsed in any way by NAICS. We offer it only as a tool to help you better use the NACIS numbering system as a way to define your own market segments.
You can search the NAICS Codes directly at:
http://www.census.gov/cgi-bin/sssd/naics/naicsrch?chart=2007
SIC Codes
The NAICS codes have largely replaced the older, Standard Industry Codes (SIC) but they also provide a window into markets that many still find useful, particularly as it is a simpler system to use and offers a broader definition of markets. You can use both the NAICS codes and the SIC codes to better define your own market segments in addition to our own, EKN directory of market segments which was independently developed by The Expert Knowledge Network to focus on the rapidly evolving economic landscape with an eye on key changes in markets taking place as a result of the transition from the industrial age to the knowledge and information driven economies of the future.
You can search the NAICS Codes directly at:
http://www.naics.com/search.htm
