Page 125 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

114 Thomas S. Lyons, Gregg A. Lichtenstein, and Nailya Kutzhanova

to engage in business in a given industry. An entrepreneur whose company
is in the home healthcare industry, for example, must master a different set
of technical skills than those needed by an entrepreneur in the plastic in-
jection molding industry. Managerial skills are those necessary for the daily
operation of a business such as administrative, management, financial, and
legal skills. Entrepreneurial skills involve the ability to recognize viable busi-
ness opportunities and act on them through innovation.
Finally, personal maturity skills include self-awareness, accountability,
emotional, and creativity skills; these are related to those skills that make
up what Daniel Goleman (1995) refers to as “emotional intelligence” (43).
All of these skills are entirely developable. Some may take longer than oth-
ers to develop; however, given the necessary time commitment and inten-
sity of relationship, individuals can be transformed from being would-be
entrepreneurs to successful entrepreneurs.
The third assertion is that entrepreneurs do not all come to the activities
of entrepreneurship at the same skill level. Instead, there is a range of skill
levels found in any population of entrepreneurs. In a sense, this might be
thought of as a hierarchy of skills, ranging from very low to very high. A
simple illustration can be drawn from the realm of entrepreneurship itself.
At one end of the entrepreneurial spectrum is the so-called nascent en-
trepreneur—someone who has never started a business before and, there-
fore, has few, if any, of these skills. At the other end of this spectrum are the
“serial” entrepreneurs, who have started and grown several businesses, both
failures and successes, and have acquired numerous skills along the way. Be-
tween these two extremes lie numerous other entrepreneurial skill set com-
binations.

The Entrepreneurial League System (ELS)
as a Ladder of Skill Development
Because, as asserted above, entrepreneurs operate at different levels of
skill, it does not make sense to address their skill development in a one-
size-fits-all fashion. Yet, that is precisely the way that most assistance
providers approach supplying financial and technical help. Their motiva-
tion is efficiency, but this is usually achieved at the expense of effectiveness.
Categorizing entrepreneurs according to skill level and matching assistance
appropriately can avoid this dilemma.
The ELS is a conceptual framework and a functioning operating system
for developing entrepreneurs’ skills by providing them with individual and
group coaching and access to the most appropriate technical and/or finan-
cial assistance at the appropriate stage in their development and at the ap-
propriate price (Lichtenstein and Lyons 2001). At its heart is the idea that
entrepreneurs can be categorized by their level of skill, as measured on the