Core entrepreneurial competencies and their interdependencies: insights from a study of Irish and Iranian entrepreneurs, university students and academics

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of core entrepreneurial competencies and their interdependencies. Developing entrepreneurial competencies is increasingly seen as important to foster entrepreneurship. Studies to date have highlighted different entrepreneurial competencies in the context of different sectors, regions and countries. However, there has been a lack of consensus in relation to the perceived relative importance of core entrepreneurial competences and their interdependencies among students, academic and entrepreneurs. Our paper focuses on two key questions: first, what are the core entrepreneurial competencies that need to be developed in educational contexts? Second, what are the interdependencies between these entrepreneurial competencies that need to be developed in educational contexts? Using a collective intelligence methodology a comparative study of Iran and Ireland was undertaken that involved three stakeholder groups of students, academics and entrepreneurs. This methodology was used to identify, rank, and structure entrepreneurial competencies considered important for university students. The results of the study indicated that productive thinking, motivation, interpersonal skills and leadership are core entrepreneurial competences that need to be developed in educational contexts. Findings also highlight critical interdependencies between entrepreneurial competencies and the relative influence of different competencies across groups and regions. We outline the implications of our findings for designing a curriculum for improving students' entrepreneurial competencies.

Hospitality entrepreneurs managing quality of life and business growth

“…In SMEs, entrepreneurs often take decisions without the help of a board or other actors in the organization, relying on their own competences and experience (Man, Lau, & Chan, 2002;Peters & Buhalis, 2013;Stoner, 1987). Entrepreneurial competencies are manifold (Rezaei-Zadeh, Hogan, O'Reilly, Cunningham, & Murphy, 2016) and range from skills (e.g. conceptual and analytical skills) (Hynes & Richardson, 2007) to personality traits (such as the need for autonomy) (Schjoedt, 2009), or focus on the ability to cope with certain functional areas in the business (e.g.…”

Constructing the Assessment Scale of Youth’s Restaurant Entrepreneurship Competency: The Case of Taiwan

“…However, the lack in nurturing entrepreneurship, literacy assessment, or the related issues in the field of culinary arts remains a concern. Some studies explored the value and importance of entrepreneurial competencies for university students (Chang et al, 2018;Rezaei-Zadeh et al, 2017;Shir et al, 2019), sharing the belief that entrepreneurship should be a core competency, nurtured at the higher education level. Furthermore, they 900566S GOXXX10.1177/2158244019900566SAGE OpenHu and Yuan research-article20202020 1 Jinwen University of Science & Technology, New Taipei City 2 Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, China mentioned creativity and innovation as essential within entrepreneurial competencies.…”

Measuring the Effectiveness of Entrepreneurship Education

“…Relationship competencies [8,11] indicate the ability to deal with various relationships in entrepreneurship, of which leadership and management are important. Innovating competencies is the most frequently researched topic of all entrepreneurial competencies research, and it can be defined as one of the core competencies of entrepreneurship [12]. Sponsoring competencies [13] refers to sponsors helping entrepreneurs get the resources they need for their business [14], including but not limited to funds, places, and intellectual property.…”

“…Other competencies, such as political competencies [10], strategic competencies [11], championing competencies [13,15], conceptual competencies [11], flexibility competencies [16], and so on. Currently, the most widely used method to measure entrepreneurial competencies is based on the competency framework which is followed in the development of entrepreneurship education programs [10,12].…”