Core Entrepreneurial Competences of Chinese College Students: Expert Conceptualisation Versus Real-Life Cases

Core entrepreneurial competence (CEC) is an important prerequisite for the success of college student entrepreneurs. Although there are plenty of studies on student entrepreneurs’ competences, most of these have been conducted in Western developed countries. Thus, their findings may not be generalisable to other cultural contexts, such as Asian emerging economies such as China. The present study fills this gap by investigating the CECs of Chinese college students using a mix of the Delphi method and case studies. Two research questions are addressed: How do key stakeholder groups in China understand the CECs of college students? And what are the discrepancies between conceptualised CECs and the actual practices of Chinese student entrepreneurs? The findings suggest that the CECs of college students extracted from Chinese experts’ opinions overlapped but were not completely consistent with the competence frameworks found in the literature. Such an inconsistency might be attributed to China’s distinct sociocultural context and developmental stage. These conceptualised competences were also at odds with the real-life practices of student entrepreneurs. Three conflicts were identified: (1) innovation vs. transformation of ideas, (2) winning entrepreneurial competitions vs. starting/running an actual business and (3) establishing vs. sustaining teams. The findings suggest that the understanding of CECs should be enriched and sharpened to help entrepreneurs address real-life challenges.