Entrepreneurship Skills for Growth-Orientated Businesse

Given the current economic challenges facing many countries across the globe, the notion of engendering greater entrepreneurial activity has become a prominent goal for many national governments. The relevance of entrepreneurship to economic development has been highlighted by many researchers (e.g. Davidsson et al, 2006) and it is now well-recognised that education and training opportunities play a key role in cultivating future entrepreneurs and in developing the abilities of existing entrepreneurs to grow their business to greater levels of success (Henry et al, 2003). According to the European Commission (2008), the aim of entrepreneurship education and training should be to ‘develop entrepreneurial capacities and mindsets’ that benefit economies by fostering creativity, innovation and self-employment. Indeed the role of SMEs in terms of growth, competitiveness, innovation, and employment is now substantially embedded in the activity of the European Commission with the publication in June 2008 of the ‘Small Business Act for Europe’ and the ‘Entrepreneurship 2020 Action Plan’ in January 2013. The concept of an entrepreneurial Europe, which promotes the creation and development of innovative businesses, has led many of the EU Member States to strengthen their SME policies since academics, politicians, and policy makers increasingly acknowledge the substantial contribution that entrepreneurship can make to an economy (Bruyat and Julien, 2001). More globally, governments across the world are increasingly recognising the positive impact that the creation of new businesses can have on employment levels, as well as the competitive advantages that small firms can bring to the marketplace (Scase, 2000). Moreover, while entrepreneurship provides benefits in terms of social and economic growth, it also offers benefits in terms of individual fulfilment, with entrepreneurship now breaking through the barriers of class, age, gender, sexual orientation, and race. However, because the relationship between entrepreneurship and economic growth is quite complex, many different approaches to encouraging entrepreneurship have been applied by a wide variety of agencies, with enterprise policies varying from country to country. Additionally, some commentators (e.g. Storey, 1994) believe that it is just a minimal group of enterprises germinating rapidly who provide the real increase in jobs and therefore it is these firms which policy makers should be converging upon. But identifying how small businesses can be transformed into growth-orientated firms remains elusive and despite the magnitude of research on growth firms, researchers remain uncertain regarding why some firms grow and others do not when originating from similar circumstances. This paper seeks to identify what entrepreneurship skills are required to develop a growth-orientated business and how these skills might be enhanced