EntreComp: Entrepreneurship Competence as a Driver of Innovation and Change

Entrepreneurship is not only about starting a business

When entrepreneurial competence comes up, thoughts go straight to startups, business plans and self-employment. But the EntreComp framework, published in 2016 by the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission, proposes a much broader view: entrepreneurial competence is the ability to turn ideas into action that generates value -- economic, social or cultural.

That definition covers the teacher who renews their own practice, the citizen who starts a neighbourhood initiative, the researcher who transfers knowledge to the market. Entrepreneurship, in this perspective, is a transversal competence that concerns everyone.

The 3 areas and 15 competences

EntreComp is articulated in 3 areas totalling 15 competences:

Ideas and opportunities

• Spotting opportunities
• Creativity
• Vision
• Valuing ideas
• Ethical and sustainable thinking

The first area concerns where ideas come from: having them is not enough, you have to recognise them, assess their feasibility and place them in an ethical frame. Ethical and sustainable thinking links EntreComp directly to GreenComp, underlining that innovation has to be responsible.

Resources

• Self-awareness and self-efficacy
• Motivation and perseverance
• Mobilising resources
• Financial and economic literacy
• Mobilising others

The second area is the engine of action: it takes self-confidence, determination and the ability to involve people and find resources. Financial literacy connects to the FinComp framework, dedicated specifically to citizens' financial competences.

Into action

• Taking the initiative
• Planning and management
• Coping with ambiguity and uncertainty
• Working with others
• Learning through experience

The last area concerns execution: moving from idea to project, handling complexity, collaborating and learning from failure. The collaboration competences interweave with LifeComp, which devotes an entire area to social competences.

EntreComp in education and work

Schools can use EntreComp to design learning experiences built on real projects, where students identify problems, generate solutions and prototype them. It is not about teaching business, but about developing a proactive and creative disposition.

In the world of work, EntreComp helps describe competences that are increasingly in demand yet hard to formalise: initiative, resilience, lateral thinking. Many European companies are integrating it into their recruitment and staff development processes.

Discover all 15 EntreComp competences in the framework catalogue on ExplorerHub.