Entrepreneurship competences in business plans: a systematic literature review

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a systematic literature review regarding the incorporation of entrepreneurial skills in higher education, specifically through the evaluation of the acquisition of this type of competences when doing a business plan. As a result of the large amount of literature on entrepreneurial skills, we think that a systematic literature review on this subject will be useful in order to clarify, systematize and determine what it is already known and the gaps that still remain in this academic field. A systematic literature review will allow us to determine the relevance given by research to this subject and its trajectory. Therefore, in this article we will elaborate a state of the art on the incorporation of entrepreneurial competences at various levels: in education, in higher education, and more specifically in the business plans. The study of competences has been widely analyzed in recent decades due to its incorporation in teaching and learning. The abundance of literature on this matter justify the suitability of conducting a systematic literature review, additionally to the classical revision of contents. We carried out the systematic review of the literature using the database Web of Science from the first paper on this matter to the present. The procedure has been to narrow the search by determining the key concepts and combining them properly. In order to identify those studies, that in one way or another, are related to the topic of entrepreneurship and education, the generic keywords considered were entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship competences, while the specific keywords were business plans, education, teaching, learning, evaluation and university. Then we have identified the articles, we have exported to a reference management software, and finally we have reviewed the selected articles and discarded the ones that did not comply with the research theme. The results show that in recent years, with the reforms involved in the Bologna Process, studies on entrepreneurial skills and their relationship with the teaching/ learning process have risen considerably. Thus, we have seen that in the scientific literature there are many experiences that include the study of competences or entrepreneurial competences in general and its relationship to education. However, to our knowledge, there are not studies that analyze the achievement of entrepreneurial competences by students when developing a business plan.