If you’ve ever pursued an MBA, you’re probably all too familiar with the concept of a business research proposal. But the university environment isn’t the only place you’ll see such proposals. In fact, some businesses use them to examine various ways in which they can grow. While often the subject of your research comes with the assignment, sometimes you’re left to choose a business proposal topic on your own. The problem is, with so many interesting subjects, how can you possibly choose just one?

Ethics and Responsibility

Philosophy applies to every area of life, even business. For that reason, some of the most popular business proposal topics fall into the ethics and responsibility category. Not only will this area give you plenty of interesting topics, but you’ll also find yourself getting lost in hours of research on thought-provoking issues.

One highly-popular arena surrounds the use of personal data to create personalized marketing. You could narrow your focus to privacy concerns, business responsibility or any other topic within the confines of collecting data on consumers. You could also cover business responsibility to employees, business responsibility to consumers and similar topics. Business ethics is always a hot topic because the information is relatable to everyone who has ever worked for an employer or trusted a business they’ve supported.

Building and Growing a Business

Many researchers choose to focus their research on the ins and outs of building and growing a business. This is especially true if you’re creating a research proposal for business management at your current employer. There are endless possibilities in this realm, since the issues businesses deal with on a daily basis are so diverse.

As you’re looking through the possibilities, consider things that interest you personally. Marketing and technology are popular specialty areas for business doctorate students, as are business economics and organizational behavior. If you’re pursuing your MBA, you may already be able to narrow this down to the topics you’ve studied in depth already. If you’re writing a business research proposal for your own company, however, consider the areas of interest of your own company and choose a topic that fits with that.

Business research proposals can be a challenge, but it helps if you are able to write about something that interests you personally. You can then narrow topics to those things that fit with your own past experience, making the proposal easier to write than if you first had to learn about the subject.