What Skills Do Nascent Entrepreneurs Need? The Evidence from Thailand

Abstract

Introduction and Rational of Study Entrepreneurial society plays an important role for countries' economic development. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) sector is considered as the vital mechanism for sustainable economic and social development for Thailand. According to the SMEs White Paper Report of Office of Small and Medium Enterprises Promotion (OSMEP) in 2015, the number of SMEs in 2015 is 2,736,744 enterprises counting for 99.73% of total business enterprises in Thailand. Additionally, Small enterprises (SE) count for 99.26% of total enterprises. In term of the contribution to Thai GDP, SMEs contribute 5,212,004 Million Baht counting for 39.6% of Total GDP and SMEs employ 10,501,166 people counting for 80.30% of Total employment in Thailand. Furthermore, 26.25% of Thai export value came from SMEs counting for 1,917,817.12 Million Baht. At present, Thai government emphasizes on new entrepreneur promotion and also focus on develop and support high potential entrepreneurs to start up their business by using technology and innovation as the mechanism. The Plan Government development (2016-2019) (Electronic Government Agency, 2016) intends to radically change to the era of digital Digital which means Thai entrepreneurs can exploit from technology and digital knowledge in order to develop innovate and enhance Thailand sustainable competitive advantage. The plan also intends to crate digital entrepreneurs and expend markets by using technology an information system According to the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) report (2016), the Total Early-stage Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) rate of Thailand is 13.7% ranked of 20th from 60 countries GEM member around the world. As the importance of Thai entrepreneurs supporting and promotion mentioned, the study of entrepreneur skills of nascent entrepreneurs since nascent stage is the most critical stage to decide the survival of the business. The objectives of this study are (1) the investigate the level of entrepreneur skills of nascent entrepreneurs in Thailand and (2) the study the influence of entrepreneur skills toward business growth expectation of Thai nascent entrepreneurs so as to more comprehensively understand the nascent entrepreneurs' situation and develop more effective policies to enhance them. Literature Review Entrepreneurial skills and Business Growth Orientation An entrepreneurial skill research is one of most interesting research area in entrepreneurship field (Hayton, 2015). Previous researches tried to study the set of necessary skills needed for new entrepreneurs to establish new businesses in nascent stage and also the set of skills for enhancing small business to larger scale of business. According to Hayton (2015) defined entrepreneurial skill as customer needs, technical or market opportunities, and pursuing opportunities. Chell (2013) states that skills consist of multidimensional constructs which are the cognitive, the affective, and the behavior. the cognitive refers to knowledge and what is learnt whereas the affective refers to emotional expression and what is experienced, and the behavior refers to action at strategic, tactical and personal levels; and the context sectoral, occupational, job and task levels. Entrepreneurial skills can also refer to the entrepreneurial competency which is one of the constructs to explain entrepreneurial intention (Shane and Venkataraman, 2000). The relationship between entrepreneurial skills and firm performance is confirmed by previous studies (Chell, 2013; Hayton, 2015; Arslan-Ayaydin et al., 2014; Mihola et al., 2016; Theriou and Aggelidis, 2014; Theriou et al., 2014). Previous studies emphasized on finding out the necessary entrepreneurial skills for successful entrepreneurs. There are many skills mentioned such as identifying customer needs, technical opportunities and market opportunities (Hayton, 2015), creation of new opportunities (Alvarez and Barney, 2007), recognizing social/market needs (Hunter, 2012). …