Abstract
These days, there is little doubt that entrepreneurial competencies—such as, taking initiative and being creative, planning and managing organizations' activities, showing persistence in problem solving processes as well as realizing the goals for which companies were established—are one of businesses' most important tools. Consequently, the following questions come naturally into the discussion: What is it that most of the successful entrepreneurs have in common? Is it education, risk affinity, experience, networks, family money, race, gender or, simply put, pure luck? Starting from the assumption that the vast majority of these people have, as common denominator, a cross-section of attributes and skills: firstly, this scientific study has the purpose of developing a model for entrepreneurship competencies, focusing on: innovation, knowledge management and intellectual capital; and secondly, this complex research has the aim of building an inclusive entrepreneurship model, tackling three main organizational targets: efficiency, productivity and performance.
TopIntroduction
In the history of economic growth and sustainable development, economic integration takes different forms depending on how the economic relations between the participating countries are realized, each having its own goals, objectives, specificities and characteristics. In addition, entrepreneurship – as the activity of implementing a new business is characterized by a high potential of helping both our planet Earth and individuals, is fast becoming an important component of the economic system and a central issue for the new global economy. However, in a world dominated, more and more, by big, successful, imposing and impressive multinational and transnational corporations, that can easily be described as having an eye-catching developing rate, a breathtaking market quota and mind-blowing registered profits, specialists are lately wondering what chances will developing entrepreneurial competencies for start-ups and small business really have in the near future (Chowdhry et al., 2019).
Nevertheless, it seems that global economy has continuously evolved (Popescu, 2019f): (a) starting from the simplest forms of interstate economic integration, represented once by the free trade areas, which signified that all the participating countries were encouraged to abandon the trade barriers between them in order to facilitate business development and administration; (b) to more advanced forms of interstate economic integration, represented by the customs’ unions, where the member countries decided to remove the trade barriers between the participating countries in order to practice a common customs’ tariff in relation to the countries that are not part of the union; (c) followed by the common markets, in which, besides the customs’ union, the free movement of economic goods, persons and capital between member countries was ensured; and (d) ending with a more specific, coherent and powerful form of economic, social and political union represented, these days, by the European Union (EU). Thus, the changes experienced by the EU over the past decade remain unprecedented. Hence, the EU came to complement all the past forms of integration, adding new traits to the already existing economic, social and political characteristics and having, as ultimate aims, harmonizing national economic policies in order to eliminate the discrimination due to the economic, social and political disparities manifested in different regions or countries.
In a competitive market economy, such as the one represented by the regions and countries that are part of the EU, the market mechanism is that impersonal force that coordinates the choices and actions of all the economic agents and which ultimately regulates the overall economic life. Moreover, competition in the EU’s countries can be described as the economic process promoted and protected by the laws of the market economy. Furthermore, the existence of EU relevant markets is believed to be an essential concept associated with competition, which evokes the limits between the economic agents and the goods and services that are in direct and indirect competition relations. In this context, the market emphasizes the totality of economic actions through which the buyers and sellers come into contact, through the exchange of goods and services. Additionally, these relationships between the participants in the economic life represent, in essence, actions related to the quantity, quality and price of the products, which are most commonly manifested between economic agents of the same nature, that is, between sellers or buyers that find themselves in some sort of direct rather than indirect competition relation (European Comission, 2011a & 2011b).
To date there has been little agreement between renowned world leaders, well-known politicians, trusted governmental officials, prominent management figures, glorified specialists, and illustrious researchers and scholars, on what economic competitiveness represents, since competition itself presents a complex and dynamic state, with many sources and facets. Besides this, it is generally believed that businesses are competitive if their potential competitive advantages are realized. The debate about competition has gained fresh prominence with many arguing that competitiveness and competitive advantages represent at their core microeconomic concepts and realities, based on which macroeconomic competitiveness and national competitive advantages increase (Popescu, 2019d).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Inclusive Entrepreneurship: promotes the idea that anyone in the world can become a successful entrepreneur in the knowledge economy – no matter of the initial background, the schools graduated or the financial possibilities, as long as there is will, determination and the right set of attitudes, skills and competences capable to generate the desire to create businesses, support and nurture them, on the road of achieving sustainable goals for the benefit of humanity and our planet.
Entrepreneurial Education: seeks to provide individuals with the right knowledge, appropriate skills and mostly needed tools in order to motivate them to create a new business and, in the same time, to shape their competences for gaining success on the marketplace, by encouraging them: to take initiative in solving problems; to become persistent in achieving their goals; to take risks in being creative and innovative; to work while concentrating on quality and performance.
Entrepreneurial journey: illustrates and explains the long, beautiful but, in the same time, complicated and sinuous road that individuals willing to leave their mark in the business domain need to venture on, having faith in the system, broadly understanding the implications of human relations and technology, completely possessing the desire to use the worlds’ resources at their best capacities, and fully understanding the impact of their decision making.
Entrepreneurial competencies: represent the key to business growth and long-term success and focus on a specific set of skills required by an individual in order to venture in the challenging activity of initiating, organizing and managing a business, taking into account the necessity of establishing most desired and highly expected aims and objectives.
Entrepreneurship: represents the act of implementing a new business – ideally, with a high potential of helping both individuals and the world as well as offering viable solutions to existing problems, while managing all the specific activities concerning such a complex process, in order to gain profit.
Entrepreneurial performance: reports the results of the efforts made by alert, agile and dynamic entrepreneurs in the decision-making processes, while striving, on the one matter, to be innovative and creative, and also while fighting, on the other matter, to take initiative and be ahead of the competitors.