Purpose

As good as existing measurements of entrepreneurial potential (EP) may appear in the literature, they are fragmented, suffer from the lack of theory integration and clarity, are inadequately specified and assessed and the dimensions are unordered by importance. These limitations of EP metrics have hindered entrepreneurial practice and theory advancement. There is a risk of atomistic evolution of the topic among “siloed” scholars and room for repetitions without real progress. The purpose of this paper was to take stock of existing measurements from which the authors developed a new instrument that is brief and inclusive.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors followed several steps to develop and validate the new instrument, including construct domain name specification, literature review, structured interviews with entrepreneurs, face validation by experts, semantic validation and statistical validation after two waves of data collected on employee and entrepreneur samples.

Findings

A clear operational definition of EP is proposed and serves as a starting point towards a unified EP theory. The new EP instrument is made up of 34 items classified into seven dimensions, which in order of importance are proactive innovativeness, management skill, calculated risk-taking, social skill, financial literacy, entrepreneurial competencies prone to cognitive and heuristic biases and bricolage. The authors provide evidence for reliability and validity of the new instrument.

Research limitations/implications

Although a model is not the model, the authors discuss several ways in which the new measurement model can be used by different stakeholders to promote entrepreneurship.

Originality/value

The authors discuss the domain representativeness of the new scale and argue that the literature can meaningfully benefit from a non-fuzzy approach to what makes the EP of an individual. By developing a new EP instrument, the authors set an important pre-condition for advancing entrepreneurial theory and practice.

中文翻译：

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个人创业潜力新测量量表的开发和验证

目的

尽管现有的创业潜力（EP）衡量标准可能出现在文献中，但它们是支离破碎的，缺乏理论整合和清晰度，没有得到充分的说明和评估，而且维度的重要性也没有排序。EP指标的这些局限性阻碍了创业实践和理论的进步。在“孤立的”学者中，该主题存在原子演化的风险，并且存在重复但没有真正进展的空间。本文的目的是盘点现有的测量结果，作者根据这些测量结果开发了一种简洁而包容的新仪器。

设计/方法论/途径

作者按照几个步骤来开发和验证新工具，包括构建域名规范、文献综述、企业家结构化访谈、专家面部验证、语义验证以及收集员工和企业家样本的两波数据后的统计验证。

发现

提出了 EP 的清晰可操作定义，并作为统一 EP 理论的起点。新的EP工具由34个项目组成，分为7个维度，按重要性排序为主动创新、管理技能、计算风险承担、社交技能、金融素养、容易出现认知和启发式偏差和拼凑的创业能力。作者为新仪器的可靠性和有效性提供了证据。

研究局限性/影响

虽然模型不是模型，但作者讨论了不同利益相关者可以使用新的衡量模型来促进创业的几种方法。

原创性/价值

作者讨论了新量表的领域代表性，并认为文献可以从非模糊方法中有意义地受益于个体 EP 的形成因素。通过开发一种新的 EP 工具，作者为推进创业理论和实践奠定了重要的前提条件。