What skills do nascent entrepreneurs need? The evidence from Thailand

Abstract

The purposes of this study are (1) to investigate the entrepreneurial skills situation of Thai nascent entrepreneurs (2) to study the influence of entrepreneurial skills towards business growth expectation of Thai nascent entrepreneurs. The sample consisted of 1,000 Thai entrepreneurs having been juristic person or commercial registered less than 2 years. Multi-stage sampling method was used to collect the data by using questionnaire as the research instrument. The result shows that Thai nascent entrepreneurs have the highest level of readiness in technological skill (4.08), marketing skill (3.99), managerial skill (3.96), human resource skill (3.66) and accounting and financial skill (3.41) ranked lowest. Additionally, the results of hypothesis testing show that (1) entrepreneurial skills statistically significantly influence on business growth expectation of Thai nascent entrepreneurs. (2) High entrepreneurial skill entrepreneurs have significantly higher level of business growth expectation than counterparts.