5. Conclusions

The present document has presented EICAA Competence Framework (EICAA-CF), which defines a complete set of competences that entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs should possess to turn opportunities into ideas and into the deployment and growth of value creating activities. EICAA-CF largely relies on EntreComp, the entrepreneurial competence framework supported by the European Commission. EICAA-CF maintains the same three competence areas of EntreComp (“Ideas and Opportunities”, “Resources” and “Into Action”) and fine tunes some of its contents, according to a systematic literature review covering more than 140 highly cited articles and documents. In short, EICAA-CF adds more emphasis on the following aspects: • Design, i.e., the competence of designing products, services and solutions with constant interaction with the target group (mainly users). Solutions arise from needs and challenges observed in the target group, can be co-created with the target group themselves and is prototyped and iterated with the target group. This process goes beyond the traditional approach of identifying needs; the needs and their solutions are co-created with the users/beneficiaries of the value creating activity. • Digital: today’s entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs need to use efficiently the general digital tools and infrastructures needed to manage any kind of business (e.g., spreadsheets, email, website…) as well as those tools that are specific to the success of that specific value creating activity (e.g., analytics, CRM). Awareness and knowledge on cybersecurity and data protection are also necessary. • Process-view: “entrepreneurship as a process” refers to the dynamic nature of the entrepreneurial activity, which consists of different phases from the early start-up until maturity and requires different entrepreneurial competences in each of them. This perspective counterbalances the traditional approach of planning and managing, often under the requirement of writing a solid business plan. The uncertainty present in entrepreneurial contexts makes planning either a very difficult task or a task that needs to be revised constantly. Thus, EICAA-CF emphasizes the need of adapting to changes, working in small increments, measuring progress and redirecting the strategy of the new venture when necessary. Entrepreneurs need to take ownership of the process as well, which means that they should manage the whole process, rather than being a passive (or reactive) actor along the process.

EICAA-CF also reduces the progression levels from eight, as it was designed in EntreComp, to four. The aim is defining a more manageable framework that can be translated into a compact survey (EICAA-Competence Monitor). Future work on EICAA-Competence Monitor will validate the structure of the current framework by conducting an exhaustive test on thousands of university students, and entrepreneurs/intrapreneurs. After validation, EICAA-CF might suffer some changes, which will be updated and communicated.