Assessing the Development of Entrepreneurial Competencies

Abstract

Entrepreneurship can be perceived as an individual's ability to identify opportunities, and to develop solutions that create innovative solutions for society. It can be a business, a project or even a movement that generates real change and impact on people's daily lives. What defines an entrepreneur is his/her behavior and attitudes and not personality traits or any other innate characteristics. It is not possible to predict which individuals have an entrepreneurial profile, but we can work on developing the skills that are necessary to become an entrepreneur. Therefore, this view assumes that entrepreneurial skills can be developed through education and life experiences. The teaching of entrepreneurship is a theme that has generated considerable interest in higher education institutions. Several programs have been proposed. Currently, it is necessary to evaluate their effectiveness, considering multiple perspectives. Only through the evaluation of the performance of these courses we can ensure that students are properly prepared for the challenges they will encounter in the labor market, whether through the launch of a start-up or in the management of a company or project. This study uses the EntreComp framework to assess the development of entrepreneurial skills and to identify the factors that influence their performance. This study offers both theoretical and practical contributions. In the conceptual component, a framework that has a multidisciplinary view of the entrepreneurial skills has been developed. On a practical level, it can be applied within a course of entrepreneurship, which will enable its replication to various educational institutions.

Student entrepreneurship competency and mindset: examining the influence of education, role models, and gender

“…These findings are in line with numerous empirical studies that have supported the general positive effect of role models on entrepreneurial intentions (Chlosta et al, 2012;Laspita et al, 2012;Liñán & Fayolle, 2015;Urbano et al, 2011). Likewise, regarding NIEC, findings by Izquierdo and Buyens (2008), Bikse andRiemere (2013), andAlmeida (2020) confirmed that after a course or program intervention, students' self-assessments of their entrepreneurial self-efficacy were higher, and they have shown a greater capacity to offer new business concepts due to their better technical understanding in the sector. On the other hand, the p-value for Gender (p = 0.481 > 0.05) suggests that the Gender variable was not statistically significant.…”

“…The results also show that after the course, students' self-assessments of their entrepreneurial self-efficacy were higher. This finding corroborates with Almeida (2020), who observed that students in management exhibited a higher level of financial and economic literacy since they discussed this topic in the context of other courses, however computer science students shown a superior capacity to offer new business concepts due to their greater technical understanding in the sector. Likewise, Bikse and Riemere (2013) found that Latvia has a unified system of methodological materials that has been developed in four subject areas and can help students develop their entrepreneurial competences.…”

“…It is worth noting that evidence from the literature (e.g., Almeida, 2020;Elmassah et al, 2022;Li & Setiawan Sanusi, 2023); Joensuu-Salo, 2022; Karimi et al, 2014;Bikse & Riemere, 2013); Manishimwe et al, 2023) shows that the three predictor variables NERM (× 1), NIEC (× 2), and Gender (× 3) influence entrepreneurial competencies and mindset. Thus, one may model (ŷ) as partially impacted by NERM (× 1), NIEC (× 2), and Gender (× 3).…”

“…While some researchers (Almeida & Amaral, 2019) stipulate that students with multidisciplinary competencies should enrol in entrepreneurship courses, others (Izquierdo & Buyens, 2008) contend that a course's performance can be evaluated by the competencies students acquire throughout a learning intervention. Only by assessing the effectiveness of these courses can researchers be certain that students are adequately prepared for the obstacles they will face in the workforce, whether in the management of a business or project or through the launch of a start-up (Almeida, 2020).…”

A conceptual competencies-based framework to enhance the innovation capacity of fourth industrial revolution entrepreneurs

“…Several developments have since occurred that have opened up the conversation on the importance of ECs significant for the 4IR (Prifti et al, 2017;Abdullahi et al, 2020;Kruger and Steyn, 2021). The literature provides emerging evidence of a positive relationship between ECs and innovative outputs, where empirical evidence suggests that entrepreneurs must have the right ECs to undertake innovative projects (Arafeh, 2016;Lilleväli and Täks, 2017;Fernando, 2020;Tittel and Terzidis, 2020;Kruger and Steyn, 2021) and key ECs for I4.0 (Grzybowska and Łupicka, 2017;Prifti et al, 2017;Chaka, 2020;Lose and Kapondoro, 2020;Ramli, Rasul and Affandi, 2020;Plawgo and Ertman, 2021).…”