Start-Up Founders’ Competence Potential
Start-Up Founders’ Competence Potential

Summary/Abstract: In order to respond to all the fast changes that are happening, it is necessary to act quickly and to be adaptable, both from the point of view of organizations and individuals, having necessary knowledge and skill and continually developing human potentials. The year 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic has shown how those changes can happen overnight and create a need for the companies’ transformation. That is the new clear reason for the big interest in researching start-ups. Start-ups are innovative and fast-developing companies, bringing new solutions and new products, and working under extreme uncertainty, therefore, they require specific skills, knowledge, and other competencies of their founders. Competencies, on the other side, are predispositions, knowledge and skills needed to respond and adapt to changes. The aim of the paper is to propose a theoretical model of relationships between start-up founders’ competence potential and outcomes of their ventures. The theoretical model is based on the Upper Echelons Theory presented by Hambrick and Mason (1984) and the scale measuring competence potential of employees in innovative enterprises proposed by Rakowska and Sitko-Lutek (2015). Competence potential of start-up founders is still not researched in depth, so the proposed theoretical method could be used as the practical research methodology.

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