Abstract
<strong>Background:</strong> Entrepreneurs need entrepreneurial skills to run their businesses. Skills can come from various sources, and the usage of the sources of skills can vary according to the different entrepreneurship phases.<p><strong>Aim:</strong> Adopting a human capital theory perspective, this study determined the specific human capital investments as sources of skills needed by entrepreneurs across the different entrepreneurship phases. The sources of skills included work experience, formal education, entrepreneurship education and entrepreneurship experience.</p><p><strong>Setting:</strong> Entrepreneurs at the different entrepreneurship phases which are nascent (entrepreneurs with ventures less than 3 months in existence), new business (entrepreneurs with ventures with more than 3 months but less than 3.5 years in existence) and established business (entrepreneurs with ventures more than 3.5 years in existence).</p><p><strong>Method:</strong> The study employed a survey research design. An online questionnaire was used to collect the data.</p><p><strong>Results:</strong> The results show that the sources of skills are used differently across the entrepreneurship phases. As entrepreneurs start businesses, in the nascent phase, the use of human capital investments (especially formal education) as a source of skills declines, thus creating a need to acquire more entrepreneurship-specific investments. In addition to acquiring skills from human capital investments, entrepreneurs learn skills from people in their social networks and self-taught skills which are used differently across the different entrepreneurship phases.</p><p><strong>Conclusion:</strong> The findings indicate that the human capital investments are dynamic and change over time as the entrepreneurship phases unfold. Because there are different sources of skills for each entrepreneurship phase, entrepreneurs need to be treated according to their phases.</p>
Highlights
Entrepreneurship is seen as a way of promoting economic growth through innovation and job creation (Dash & Kaur 2012; Stenholm, Acs & Wuebker 2013; Turton & Herrington 2012)
There is paucity of evidence of the role of work experiences beyond start-up, this study proposes that work experience may be a source of skills needed by entrepreneurs in different entrepreneurship phases to carry out entrepreneurial activities such as organising equipment and facilities, hiring employees, seeking financial support, forming legal entity, owning and managing a business, environmental scanning, implementing organisational systems, quality control and evaluating ideas with existing frameworks (Amorós & Bosma 2014; Man et al 2002; Reynolds & Curtin 2008; Trevelyan 2011): Hypothesis 2: Entrepreneurs in the nascent phase use skills acquired from work experience the most when compared to entrepreneurs in the new business and established phases
This study made a contribution by advancing on the human capital theory that human capital investments and skills outcomes change in significance in the different entrepreneurship phases
Summary
Entrepreneurship is seen as a way of promoting economic growth through innovation and job creation (Dash & Kaur 2012; Stenholm, Acs & Wuebker 2013; Turton & Herrington 2012). The significance of entrepreneurship as an engine of economic growth has attracted the interest of many governments and non-governmental organisations (World Bank 2012) and entrepreneurship scholarship (Wiklund et al 2011) This growing academic interest in entrepreneurship has seen the application of human capital theory from the economics literature to study the success and failure of business ventures (Ucbasaran, Westhead & Wright 2008; Unger et al 2011). Most of the studies that applied human capital focused on either opportunity recognition or exploitation, with confined attention to singular phases of the entrepreneurship process, namely, the nascent, new business and established phases (Brixy, Sternberg & Stüber 2012; Singer, Amorós & Moska 2015). Skills can come from various sources, and the usage of the sources of skills can vary according to the different entrepreneurship phases
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