Page 126 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

What Makes a Successful Entrepreneur? 115

Table 6.1. The Entrepreneurial Levels of Degree of Skill

dimensions of technical, managerial, entrepreneurial, and personal matu-
rity noted in the previous section of this chapter. The ELS utilizes the base-
ball farm system as a metaphor for the resulting hierarchy, or ladder, of
skills (see table 6.1). The idea is to develop entrepreneurs by moving them
up the skills ladder from wherever on the ladder they begin their develop-
mental journey.
Table 6.1 is simplistic in the sense that it suggests that skills are uniform
across skill dimensions for each league level in the system. In reality, an en-
trepreneur who might be classified as having Single A skills, on average,
may actually have varying skill levels across the dimensions.
The ELS operates on the principle that in order to ensure that an entre-
preneur is able to advance up the ladder of skill development a system must
be in place that connects all of the rungs of the ladder and makes sure all
rungs (skill levels) are served. Numerous communities, for example, pro-
vide strong assistance at the Rookie and Single A levels and have been ef-
fective at serving Triple A entrepreneurs as well, but they do not serve Dou-
ble A entrepreneurs. This situation amounts to a missing rung in the ladder
that precludes the development of local entrepreneurs above the Single A
level and, in some cases, results in the loss of those effected entrepreneurs
to the community.

The Measurement of Entrepreneurship Skills
To be able to effectively assign entrepreneurs to appropriate skill levels
and track their development requires a tool for assessing, or measuring, en-
trepreneurship skills. The ELS utilizes such a tool, which permits the mea-
surement of individual skills, allows scoring by skill dimension, and pro-
vides an overall score. The ability to provide entrepreneurs with the right
technical and financial assistance at the right stage of their development