SME Managers' Most Important Entrepreneurship and Business Competences

The requirements of an increasing globalized and competitive economy lead managers to search for training solutions which can rapidly bridge the gap of their lacking skills, knowledge or competences. To assert with adequate training programs, in particular for SMEs managers, a study was conducted in six European countries with the objective of identifying the most relevant competences they need to fulfil. A literature review and several interviews with business associations‟ executives resulted in a list of 34 competences which we organized in four categories: personal, team management, business and technical. These competencies were put at trial through a survey conducted among 154 SMEs managers who had to evaluate each proposed competence with the attribution of a relevance degree. Although we show that SME managers should be well prepared in a rich set of complementary areas to perform their job, it is clear that some of the competences are crucial for them to tackle today‟s challenges. This paper presents a ranking of the competences by importance as perceived by managers. These findings can help training institutions wishing to design new training programs which more in line with managers‟ needs.