Chapter 6: Toward a Theory of Entrepreneurial Competency

Entrepreneurial competency may be an oxymoron to a disgruntled investor but it provides policy makers, program directors, educators, and organizational researchers with an important predictor of venture outcomes. Perhaps more importantly, it provides a key intervention strategy for bolstering or turning around new ventures and for facilitating the would-be entrepreneur.

Entrepreneurial competencies are defined as underlying characteristics such as generic and specific knowledge, motives, traits, self-images, social roles, and skills which result in venture birth, survival, and/or growth. Entrepreneurial competencies are obviously carried by individuals – the entrepreneurs who begin or transform organizations and who add value through their organizing of resources and opportunities. The theory we need to build and the research we need to conduct will link this individual-level cluster of variables to organizational-level variables. Specifically, we expect entrepreneurs’ competencies to have causal connection to venture initiation and “success” and that the process of venturing will feedback to enhance the entrepreneurs’ competencies. That is, entrepreneurs will learn from their experiences in venturing as well as other forums and this learning will expand and/or deepen that competence.