How to obtain knowledge of and access to the data sources that are used by Investment funds ?

[ajacobson]

Our view is to leave it to the professionals - so if you want institutional-grade thinking and don't have enough scale - develop an institutional relationship or it's almost impossible. The scale will be critical and if you don't have $25 million or more it's pretty tough. Subscribing and reading all the journals in the areas of interest will also be a scale issue as you'll be building a research group and if you are small that is prohibitive.
Lease a Bloomberg - that gives you tons of data, but not enough of the research.
Get some college interns - again scale - the going rate for an intern here the Chicago area is around $14 to $17 an hour and the Northwestern Library is about a 25-minute drive and we've found that is money well spent.
There are more sources like podcasts by you still hit the scale issue.

 

[John Cullinane]

I am not looking for the output of their research. rather the sources of research in general (which I presume are used by hedge funds as well).

For example. if a company has a new technology in progress that would revolutionize the way business is done, where would one read about it ? Or for that matter, the things that various people are working with it being up to the retail investor to decide whether it would be something big and deciding to invest in it.

What to read - where to look for such information.

Learn about the tech first, once you see what is now possible it will help you come up with once thought impossible ideas.