Entrepreneurial competencies: Assessment and predictive value for entrepreneurship

•The current study starts from a competency approach towards entrepreneurship.•Study 1 examines the structure and reliability of a survey assessing entrepreneurs' competences.•Study 2 investigates which competences are predictive for entrepreneurship 3 to 5 years later.•Results demonstrate the psychometric quality and measurement invariance across groups.•Perseverance and insight into the market positively predicted entrepreneurship.

Prior research has stated that entrepreneurs and more specifically their competencies are central to the success of small and medium sized organisations. The current manuscript reports two studies. The first study assesses the psychometric quality of a questionnaire assessing competencies considered to be important for entrepreneurs in the literature. In total, 34,968 (aspiring) entrepreneurs were asked to indicate how often they perform selected behaviours as indicators of their competencies. Results demonstrated the psychometric quality and measurement invariance across groups of the instrument. Competency ratings of aspiring entrepreneurs were consistently and significantly lower than those of nascent and experienced entrepreneurs, however effect sizes were limited. The second study examined the predictive value of these competencies for being active as an entrepreneur three to five years after completing the instrument. Administrative data on the status regarding entrepreneurship was retrieved for a subsample of 3239 participants. Results indicated that perseverance and insight into the market contributed positively to being and remaining active as an entrepreneur.