Research articles

Summary PhD thesis of Martijn Driessen

A summary of the PhD thesis of Martijn Driessen, which led to the creation of the Entrepreneur Competency Model and ultimately Entrepreneur Scan.

Measuring Characteristics and Traits of Entrepreneurs

This paper is about Entrepreneur Scan. The paper, co-authored by E-Scan creator Martijn Driessen, describes the tool and discusses the results of E-Scan for more than 21,000 start up entrepreneurs and 60 potential successors.

The role of an entrepreneur in small business success

This paper discusses the role of an entrepreneur within a small business and the role of Entrepreneur Scan. It looks into the E-Scan theory and the theory in practice.

The impact of entrepreneurship education

This paper is about young enterprise and how it worked in the Netherlands. It analyses the impact of a leading entrepreneurship education program on college students’ entrepreneurship skills and motivation

Succession planning in SME’s: are entrepreneurial characteristics important?

This study tests factors which could account for successful SME transfers and analyses 130 entrepreneurs who succeeded in transferring their business.

Supporting disabled adults into self employment: An assessment of the use of psychological tools

Research into potential tests that could assist disabled adults into self employment led to the selection of E-Scan as the most appropriate.

How E-Scan helps Entrepreneurs

The entrepreneur is the pivot for the success of a business, whether it’s a start-up or a mature and thriving concern. Therefore having direct insight to one’s own inherent traits and characteristics will increase both understanding and opportunity to improve entrepreneurial competence. E-Scan helps entrepreneurs to gain an awareness of their strengths, weaknesses and predominant thinking styles, all of which affect entrepreneurial capability.

Most other psychometric profiling tools concentrate on leadership, management or ‘role’ qualities and characteristics and these have mostly been developed for large organisational needs, analysing whether people will ‘fit-in’ when being recruited or as part of strategic objectives. E-Scan was developed to focus on small business, or entrepreneurial team activity and is closely aligned to the culture and nature of this environment

What will it achieve?

The purpose of E-Scan is to establish the impact an entrepreneur will have on their own business success, which is a fundamental element to how the E-Scan can be applied. This in turn means entrepreneurs will increase their performance which will then convert into higher and faster business success.

The most unique aspect to E-Scan is it provides an insight to how the entrepreneur thinks and how this correlates to how they react to situations, issues and opportunities. This is a reflection of the Hermann analysis and looks at whether a person has a preference for reason or emotion, logic or intuition The overall score is reflected in four key Thinking Styles, Pioneer, Salesperson, Manager and Specialist.

The main benefits of E-Scan and an Entrepreneurial Review:

• An understanding of personal entrepreneurial strengths and weaknesses = awareness
• Self awareness and plan of action leads to quick and effective focus on behaviour and activity = empowerment
• Increased desire and determination to build understanding of entrepreneurship and own capability = better business performance

This can either be self development or with greater impact under the guidance of a business coach, mentor or as part of a development programme offered by a specialist training company, business academy or University.