Uncovering dominant characteristics for entrepreneurial intention and success in the last decade: systematic literature review

This study presents a systematic literature review to identify dominant characteristics that predict entrepreneurial intention and entrepreneurial success in the twenty-first century. The aim was to provide insights to entrepreneurs, academicians, policy makers, counsellors and all those charged with the responsibility of entrepreneurship development. The study applied a systematic review of the literature contained in the two databases, namely Semantic Scholar and Google Scholar. The analysis of the literature identified self-efficacy, conscientiousness, locus of control, need for achievement and innovativeness as the indisputably and unarguably key top personal characteristics that predict both entrepreneurial intention and guarantee entrepreneurial success. The study also finds that characteristics that predict entrepreneurial intention also guarantee entrepreneurial success. The review of the existing literature shows that there are gaps in it. For example, there are not many countries where studies have been done in the area of interest, and the research methods used in those studies are not balanced because they are mostly quantitative. The major contribution of the study was the identification of key dominant personal characteristics that predict both entrepreneurial intention and lead to entrepreneurial success in today’s dynamic environment. The other key contribution is stages, methodology and the analysis that can be replicated and employed by other researchers (scholars and practitioners) to conduct other studies or better still, similar studies in the future.