The world is constantly changing, adding speed to some areas. The contemporary paradigm is characterised by keywords such as digitalisation and abbreviations such as VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity), signalling the radical changes taking place (cf. Bennett and Lemoine, 2014). Another keyword to add to this list could be projectification – an ongoing development, challenging and changing the traditional institutions, from laws to mindsets (Lundin, 2016), including both institutions of work life (Ekstedt, 2019) and entrepreneurship (Auschra, Braun, Schmidt & Sydow, 2019). Examination of linkages between projects and entrepreneurship (cf. Kuura, Blackburn & Lundin, 2014) indicates that links exist chiefly between the two practice fields. For instance, at certain stages of typical entrepreneurial processes (such as starting, renewal, closure, transfer and so on) entrepreneurs act as project leaders. Thus, the two academic disciplines – entrepreneurship and project management – should be related as well. However, scrutinisation (Kuura et al., 2014) demonstrates that, factually, the disciplines have developed in vaguely parallel but quite separate paths.
Nearly three decades ago, Sieli (1991) proposed an idea about managing projects as processes, hence calling to redefine traditional project management approaches, seeing projects as unique. Taking advantage of process management has led to significant paradigmatic shifts, particularly recognising that despite the possible uniqueness, some processes might be reused in several projects (Artto & Turkulainen, 2018). Currently, most organisations balance projects and non-projects (Nesheim, 2019). Further developments led to linking processes and projects to entrepreneurship, which is explored in Section 2.
Immense, and even growing, importance of entrepreneurship in all economies is generally accepted most attention is usually paid to small- (including micro-) and medium-sized businesses, especially start-ups. Most public bodies (including the European Union [EU]) implement accordant policies via support systems, using significant resources (Kuura et al., 2014). In contrast, project management has received very little attention and almost no public support (only a few exceptions exist); most developments have been achieved by strong professional organisations (Kuura et al., 2014). Yet, the importance of projects in current economies is also substantial and even growing, as up to a third of the global economic activity takes place as projects, even more in emerging economies. Projects and project management support the achieving of strategic objectives of organisations and coping with increasing complexity, uncertainty and ambiguity in the contemporary socioeconomic environment (Bredillet, 2010). Projects are especially important in intrapreneurship (this aspect will be scrutinised in Section 2).
Proceeding from a proposition that some typical entrepreneurial processes are essentially projects, it can be assumed that most entrepreneurs also need project management competences. This leads to the rationale of this paper – to fill the research gap, comparing the competences that are required for project managers and entrepreneurs, as well as enlighten possibilities for mutual enrichment, hence contributing to further linking of project management and entrepreneurship on the conceptual level. The main practical outcome will be ‘project’ competences to be integrated into competence models for entrepreneurs.
The next section (Section 2) scrutinises the most significant developments of linking entrepreneurship and project management, focussing on recent advancements, particularly links via competences. Section 3 brings out the relevance of competences and developments in the competence models, relying mainly on the literature of education. The focal section (Section 4) investigates and juxtaposes competences, which is necessary for entrepreneurs and project managers. The last section (i.e. Section 5) discusses the main findings and proposes the ways for further advancements, including the development of more general competence profiles, corresponding to the current trends in career development, such as T- or Π-shaped persons and dual career.
According to emerging understandings, core processes in entrepreneurship (exploration and exploitation of opportunities) can be treated as projects (cf. Geldhof, Weiner, Agans, Mueller & Lerner, 2014). The latter research belongs to educational sciences, but process view is becoming a mainstream also in entrepreneurship literature (cf. George, Parida, Lahti & Wincent, 2016). A focal keyword, ‘process’, emerges from the previous review of literature on entrepreneurial opportunity, whereas ‘project’ appears only on one occasion. This can be taken as a sign of the times, as the most recent cited sources date back to 2014. But the latest developments indicate that options for linking project management and entrepreneurship are increasingly used. For instance, scrutinising the developments towards a project society, Lundin et al. (2015) noted several interesting theoretical and practical matters that enable the convergence of entrepreneurship and project management, such as effectuation. Lindkvist and Hjorth (2015) exemplified how a cultural project was legitimised in adverse environments and gathered momentum, as typical of an entrepreneurial organisation-creation process. Furthermore, Kiznyte, Welker and Dechange (2016) investigated the usability of project management for the creation of a business plan, as well as the management system for the business, including the supporting of teamwork culture in a dynamic start-up organisation. Per contra, Huff (2016) considered entrepreneurship as the base for the management of an innovative project in complex and uncertain environments. Martens, Carneiro, Martens and Silva (2015) proposed a conceptual model relating entrepreneurial orientation to project management maturity. Further, Belfort, Martens and de Freitas (2016) related entrepreneurial orientation to a typology of project management systems (ad hoc, classic, innovation and entrepreneurship/intrapreneurship). Martens, Machado, Martens, Quevedo-Silva & de Freitas (2018) claimed that entrepreneurial orientation affects project success significantly.
A milestone in linking entrepreneurship and project management research is a special issue of
Considering the rationale of this paper, it is worth noting that the necessity (or at least usefulness) of project management competences in entrepreneurship has been pointed out already some time ago. For instance, Nogeste (2010) proved how programme management can be used for strategic initiatives, including specific entrepreneurial initiatives such as mergers and acquisitions. Noppel and Kuura (2011) examined the need for project management competences in the reconstruction of companies and detected that the appropriate ‘set of competences’ for a reorganisation adviser resembles the competences of a programme manager. Further, Ramirez-Portilla (2013) developed a conceptual model, elucidating the influence of a project manager's competences (including personality traits) on a typical entrepreneurial process – exploration (discovery) and exploitation of opportunities. Dzansi, Rambe and Coleman (2015) also stressed the usefulness of project management competences, particularly accurate resource estimation, which is vital in resource generation (or acquisition), which is – in turn – topical in entrepreneurship. Laursen and Killen (2019) elaborated the link between temporary (just programme) organisation and entrepreneurship, paying attention to a specific resource – competences. Sonta-Draczkowska and Mrozewski (2019) found product development to be both project based and entrepreneurial and, thus, requiring specific competences, especially when adapting
It is worth noting that within the past few years, attempts to link entrepreneurship and project management seem to be quickened. This could be related to a wider, more general trend of cross-fertilisation and collaboration between different disciplines. For one, Davies, Manning & Söderlund (2018) indicated how interdisciplinary research can be more effective in the case of innovation and project management. Innovation is often seen as a mainstream feature in the linking of projects and entrepreneurship (Kuura et al., 2014; Geldhof et al., 2014; Belfort et al., 2016; Edwards-Schachter, Garcia-Granero, Sanchez-Barrioluengo, Quesada-Pineda & Amara, 2015). In turn, innovation relates to creativity, bricolage and improvisation, which are considered increasingly important in both fields (Germain, Aubry & Bonnemains, 2019; Kuura & Sandoval, 2019).
Importantly, most recent efforts in linking project management and entrepreneurship tend to concern competences. For one, Cook (2017) targets on changing the mindset of typical project managers who behave as employees rather than as entrepreneurs. Bushuyev, Murzabekova, Murzabekova and Khusainova (2017) stressed that competence in managing projects and programmes is not sufficient for breakthrough projects, where ‘entrepreneurial spirit (energy)’ is also needed. Mota and de Castro (2019) treated new business formation as a cumulative process of relating the new business to the existing business network, where different but complementary types of inter-organisational projects have crucial roles in the embedding process. This approach is in line with recent developments in the understanding of entrepreneurship, perceiving it as network creation, rather than as organisation creation (Sydow, Schmidt & Braun, 2015). In turn, this may lead to another opportunity for linking entrepreneurship and projects via applying the perspective of process management, particularly orchestration and choreography (Kuura & Lundin, 2019). Moreover, Tolfo, Wazlawick, Ferreira and Forcellini (2018) specified a set of agile practices that promote entrepreneurial skills. As expected, they studied software developers; however, nowadays, the principles of agility are applied elsewhere, and the overall trend (cf. Cooper & Sommer, 2016) seems to be towards hybrid methods, combining traditional (or ‘waterfall’) and agile approaches.
This examination of the mutual relationships between project management and entrepreneurship affirmed a continuous and seemingly quickening convergence between still-quite-separate fields of research, as well as practice. In this context, the trend to converge these fields via competences deserves more attention. Characterisation of the development of the project management profession, notably the transition from amateurism to professionalism in the mid-1970s, is strikingly alike the characterisation of entrepreneurship as a profession (Kuura et al., 2014). Therefore, there are probably still unused possibilities for mutual learning and enrichment via competences, which are explored and discussed in the following sections.
Competences have been an object of research and debate for decades; a considerable body of literature has grown up around the theme, yet there is some terminological confusion. In the 1990s,
Another popular matter of discussion has been what the components of competences are. In general terms, the most characterising keywords in the current paradigm seem to be
Employability is a wide phenomenon where competences are firmly established. A high-level division of competences is specific (or occupational) versus general. General competences include problem-solving, critical thinking, team skills and so on. These reflect the higher thinking skills that are associated with occupational expertise, particularly for highly specific professions such as medicine, teaching and so on (Clarke, 2018) It is worth noting that general competences are firmly related to interdisciplinary competences, which are needed to foster innovative potential in collaboration with the representatives of different disciplines (Claus & Wiese, 2019). Even though several viewpoints argue for increasing the importance of general competences, in highly specific fields (cf. Hokkanen et al., 2019), in general (cf. Claus & Wiese, 2019) and even in both (cf. Kregel, Ogonek & Matthies, 2019), there is still a constitutive place for specific competences. Both general and specific competences are increasingly needed because more competent people are better motivated and happier at work (cf. Salas-Vallina, Alegre & Guerrero, 2018). Thus, all employers should consider the development of competences of all staff members to be essential. Following the rationale of this paper, the main trends in the competence models of entrepreneurs and project managers will be examined.
Entrepreneurship, as a profession, is quite special – as entrepreneurs are not employed by somebody else, nobody will ask for their qualification or certificate. As employability is not an issue in entrepreneurship, there has been no need to define the competences for entrepreneurs. However, resulting from changing societal needs, development and supporting of entrepreneurship has become increasingly important. So, promoting entrepreneurial attitudes and developing entrepreneurial capacity is nowadays one of the key priorities all over the world. For instance, the EU proposed eight key competences for lifelong learning, one of which was a ‘
The generally recognised increasing importance of entrepreneurship has led to serious attempts to define entrepreneurial competences. After intensive research and long debates for finding consensus on distinctive competence elements of entrepreneurship, ‘The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework ’ (EntreComp) was issued in 2016. According to the EntreComp concept, entrepreneurship is a transversal competence, which applies to all spheres of life and all the 15 interrelated competences should be treated as a whole (Bacigalupo, Kampylis, Punie & Van den Brande, 2016). According to the authors of EntreComp, it ‘¼
Although EntreComp appeared relatively recently, it comprises ideas that appeared already some time ago. For one, Lans et al. (2008) stressed that focussing on competence in entrepreneurship education should make potential entrepreneurs aware of the importance of certain entrepreneurial competences and provide direction for competence development. Robles and Zarraga-Rodriguez (2015) reviewed entrepreneurship literature in order to obtain a set of entrepreneurship-related individual competences. Their results indicated that if entrepreneurial competences were commonly developed, it would improve entrepreneurship behaviour and, thus, the competitiveness of the organisation, and even the whole economic system. Mets et al. (2017) investigated self-assessed entrepreneurial competences in higher education institutions. They suggested that entrepreneurial competences support the efficient application of professional competences by graduates as entrepreneurs and as employees. They argued that the development of individual-level entrepreneurial competences through entrepreneurship education should precede socioeconomic outcomes of learning in real life, such as employability or business and social venturing.
The importance of entrepreneurial competences has grown in the light of recent trends of a competence-based approach. Entrepreneurial competences are critical in today's world where not only entrepreneurs but also project managers, who often act as intrapreneurs, are constantly trying to adapt to the changes to stay cutting edge. This is in line with recent findings about the importance of entrepreneurial orientation (Martens et al., 2015; Belfort et al., 2016; Martens et al., 2018). Entrepreneurial competences undergo development through various interpretations and will definitely be elaborated over time in order to address the particular human capital needs.
Project management, as a profession, has some similarities with entrepreneurship: up to mid-1970s, both were considered amateurish; afterwards, both developed into professionalism. Yet, because of the ‘project management movement’, development of special techniques for effective project work, professional bodies, practice and competence standards and certification systems, as well as an exponentially growing number of (notably certified) professionals, project management has left entrepreneurship behind (Kuura et al., 2014). Just voluntary certification systems render project managers
To explore the possible concurrences in competences for entrepreneurship and management of projects, it is necessary to carry out cross-examination of competences, defined for both fields of practice. As clarified in previous sections, the competences for entrepreneurs are less defined, but there has been a significant attempt – the ‘Entrepreneurship Competence Framework ’ (hereinafter termed ‘EntreComp’; Bacigalupo et al., 2016), which is taken as a framework of the competences necessary for entrepreneurs. On the project management side, the situation is different – several respected professional associations (such as PMI, IPMA and others) have defined competences that are necessary for management of projects. Thus, recognising the existence of alternatives, the IPMA's ‘
A relational linguistic analysis and a conceptual analysis − two qualitative methods, both of which aim at clarifying terminological and conceptual issues – were chosen to find the concurrences of competences for entrepreneurship (EntreComp) and management of projects (IPMA-ICB). According to Kosterec (2016), a linguistic analysis aims to allow a deeper view on how a term is used within a specific domain, and the conceptual analysis aims to gain an understanding of a concept in the conceptual network. The research question in relational linguistic analysis is simple – what kind of terms are used and how often they occur in different parts of competence definitions. The relational linguistic analysis started with the coding of the terms and proceeded with the calculation of the correlation in the occurrence of the terms across different subunits of EntreComp and IPMA-ICB.
Bolden and Gosling (2006) consider this kind of analysis appropriate because it enables the grasping of the semantic content and the meanings of competencies. A number of scholars make use of computational tools and methods of concordance and collocation analysis (Luz & Sheehan, 2020; Claus & Wiese, 2019; Nuopponen, 2010b) to identify a relationship between interdisciplinary competences. Although the analytical work done is more of qualitative nature, such methods are chosen to provide an objective and relevant technique for exploring the concepts (Luz & Sheehan, 2020). Nuopponen (2010b) argues that in multidisciplinary research, an agreement on similar concepts belonging to different concept systems has to be reached.
According to Nuopponen (2010b), the main reason for using conceptual analysis is to understand the meanings of the terms, to identify how they are related and to compare these concepts in different domains. The conceptual analysis was carried out by discerning competence threads in EntreComp and IPMA-ICB, coding them and then searching for coincidences. The underlying methodical approach is ‘chunking’, originating from the classics of cognitive psychology (Miller, 1956), meaning the grouping of similar pieces of information and processing them as single, meaningful units. Nowadays, chunking is used in several fields, such as machine translation (Wu & Chang, 2006; Wu, He, Zhou, Xiao & Luo, 2017; Tait & Wilks, 2019) and elsewhere, and is, importantly, seeping into research (Wilson, Bell, Wilson & Witteman, 2018).
Similar methods have been used, such as the Jaccard score (comparing travel reviews; Park & Kim, 2017) and Word Count (comparing consumer-produced product reviews; Kostov, Bécue-Bertaut & Husson, 2014). Chunking is an essential technique in machine learning and is the basis for the respective software (software in biomedical texts has been compared; Kang, van Mulligen & Kors, 2011). Various techniques for comparing texts have also been identified in the development of machine learning (Sieg, 2018; Elia, 2020), and although a simple counting of words at the machine learning level is not adequate, it is sufficiently accurate to compare the substantive overlap between the different parts of the specific two texts.
In research, chunking means chiefly applying the agile, iterative approach, which in turn relates to the grounded theory approach, where agility is treated as a holistic and complex phenomenon (Hoda & Noble, 2017). In this paper, the principles of chunking are used in combination with the iterative approach.
Each thread of the EntreComp framework (60 rows in a table) was separately copied to the word count tool (
On the high level, EntreComp distinguishes 15 competences in three groups: ‘
The full correlation analysis (see Appendix 1) indicates insignificant linguistic connections between these ‘environmental’ areas, except for some EntreComp threads in the
Strongest correlations between EntreComp threads in the group
Identify, create and seize opportunities | 0.20 | |
Analyse the context | 0.29 | |
Design value | 0.23 | |
Recognise the value of ideas | 0.38 | |
Behave ethically | 0.22 | |
Think sustainably | 0.16 | |
Assess impact | 0.20 |
EntreComp, The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework; IPMA-ICB, International Project Management Association's Individual Competence Baseline.
The maximum (strongest) linguistic correlations between IPMA-ICB competences and EntreComp threads (see Table 2) appeared between slightly different areas of competences. The competence group
Strongest linguistic correlation between EntreComp threads and IPMA-ICB competences1
EntreComp competences and threads | Resources | Manage resources (material and nonmaterial) | 0.17 | 0.18 | 0.62 (**) | 0.18 | 0.12 | 0.15 |
Use resources responsibly | 0.09 | 0.09 | 0.48 (*) | 0.10 | 0.10 | 0.15 | ||
Into action | Plan and organise | 0.15 | 0.12 | 0.16 | 0.41 (*) | 0.16 | 0.33 | |
Be flexible and adapt to changes | 0.17 | 0.15 | 0.19 | 0.33 | 0.14 | 0.63 (**) | ||
Calculate risk | 0.14 | 0.07 | 0.06 | 0.09 | 0.48 (*) | 0.19 | ||
Manage risk | 0.15 | 0.13 | 0.09 | 0.13 | 0.43 (*) | 0.16 | ||
Team up | 0.36 | 0.57 (*) | 0.14 | 0.13 | 0.07 | 0.25 | ||
Expand your network | 0.43 (*) | 0.32 | 0.12 | 0.12 | 0.07 | 0.20 |
EntreComp, The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework; IPMA-ICB, International Project Management Association's Individual Competence Baseline.
– significant correlation
– strong correlation
Correlation between EntreComp and IPMA-ICB areas
Ideas and opportunities | 0.17 | 0.20 | 0.19 | |
Resources | 0.14 | 0.23 | 0.18 | |
Into action | 0.12 | 0.23 | 0.15 | |
EntreComp, The Entrepreneurship Competence Framework; IPMA-ICB, International Project Management Association's Individual Competence Baseline.
The group
The linguistic analysis revealed not only some quite significant, but also weak, correlations (not to say incoherencies). However, such a linguistic approach has natural limitations. It is commonly known that sometimes both practitioners and researchers in different areas use different words to denote the same or a similar substance; moreover, some words may have quite a different meaning for them (cf. Mills et al., 2020). Thus, a more substantial discussion is carried out in the next section.
Inspection of both the examined competence frameworks shows several similarities. First, all competences are grouped into three high-level categories, labelled
Stated in IPMA-ICB and ISO 21500, the term ‘project logic’ fits better with intrapreneurship, as dominant ‘classic’ views on entrepreneurship presume realisation of opportunities by establishing new (small) organisations, whereas intrapreneurship considers the same in established, mature and bigger organisations. As pointed out before (see Table 1), a significant linguistic correlation appeared between
Moreover, linguistic analysis evinced that EntreComp is mostly focussed on behavioural competences, both in the groups
Surprisingly, the group
A more detailed feature about the threads in EntreComp is the ability to find finances for the ideas (thread
Some indication of the differences between an entrepreneur's and a project manager's world can also be seen in the low maximum scores of the EntreComp threads
The last example denotes just one of many possibilities for mutual learning and enrichment for both entrepreneurs and project managers. Project managers are increasingly expected to act as entrepreneurs or intrapreneurs, so they can use and empower all their behavioural (area
This study contributes to linking two neighbouring disciplines – entrepreneurship and project management – chiefly through competences. Furthermore, this is a response to a call by Davies et al. (2018) to learn from other disciplines. With regard to competences, entrepreneurship can learn and/or take over (if necessary, adopt) several aspects from project management, and vice versa. Yet, the role of competence models and professional standards in entrepreneurship differs from that of project management. One advantage of certified professionals (Blomquist et al., 2018)
The main implication of this study is a simple recommendation – to incorporate core project management competences into competence models (and standards) for entrepreneurs. As the study indicates, the task is not difficult due to the fact that the project competences are already there; however, a more comprehensive approach is needed. In general, the necessity and usefulness of entrepreneurial competences have already been accepted almost everywhere; therefore, enriching the range with crucial project competences may be attractive for students in universities, as well as in K-12 and earlier levels. It is known that not all students completing an entrepreneurship course will become ‘classic’ entrepreneurs who will establish and run their own companies. Thus, increasing the employability of graduates through combined competences can play an important role. A good project manager in the current society is like an intrapreneur or just an entrepreneurial project manager. At the same time, ongoing projectification of entrepreneurial ecosystems (cf. Auschra et al., 2019) will create a need for project-oriented entrepreneurs, possessing corresponding competences, or at least understanding of the professional language of project people. Entrepreneurship (entrepreneurial ecosystems) supports innovativeness and regional development (respective ecosystems), which also undergo projectification (cf. Kovach & Kucherova, 2006). In such ecosystems, a focal role belongs to clusters (Mackiewicz, 2020), wherein both entrepreneurial and project competences are increasingly relevant. Thus, project management is increasingly seen as a general competence, necessary for everybody and applicable everywhere. The education system must think years ahead to meet the expectations of the graduates entering the labour market in the future. According to Susskind and Susskind (2015), standardisation is an essential stage in the development of a profession, leading to the next stage – systematisation, where the main ambition is identifying the shortcomings in knowledge and making enrichments. Linking the accumulated knowledge across disciplines will probably be contributory, especially if combined with other possibilities.
This study has obvious limitations – the linguistic approach mentioned here and a limited choice of analysed sources (EntreComp and IPMA-ICB). There are not many alternatives in entrepreneurship, but a considerable amount of choices in project management provides a possibility for further analysis. A wider avenue for further research could be a qualitative examination of the competences required in the examined professions, as well as in other related professions. Not much is currently known about competences in the context of linking different disciplines, thus providing a potential opportunity to address these research gaps. Realising this potential may accelerate learning and adapting from related disciplines and advancing both research and practice. Moreover, comparison of different competence models and standards in the profession (cf. Mills et al., 2020) may add value. And finally, as mentioned earlier, the improvisational aspect in competences was left out of the scope of this paper, but this is a promising avenue for further research. The influence of an unexpected crisis due to the Corona pandemic has demonstrated the necessity to respond rapidly using improvisation. Quite probably, this will remain the ‘new normality’ in the VUCA-world.