It is easy to think of an entrepreneurial mindset as one trait: being a risk-taker, a born salesperson, someone with a big idea. The ENTREMIND assessment tool starts somewhere else. An entrepreneurial mindset is not a single trait but 10 parts, in three groups, and each of them can be developed.
For athletes there is a second point. Every part has a counterpart in sport, and the tool uses it to explain what the part means. Here are all 10, each with the one-line question the athlete guide uses to sum it up.
How you think
The first four are thinking skills: how you see, weigh up and plan.
- Opportunity awareness and vision. Spotting an opening and seeing where it could lead. Athletes who can read the field can learn to read a market: scanning a game for space is close to scanning for needs nobody is meeting. Can you spot opportunities and envision where they lead?
- Creative problem solving. Finding solutions beyond the usual ones. You adapt tactics mid-game, and a new venture with limited resources asks for the same improvising. Can you find unconventional solutions with limited resources?
- Critical evaluation. Questioning your own ideas, your assumptions and the feedback you get. If you can watch your own match footage honestly, you can test a business assumption with the same rigour. Can you question your own assumptions honestly?
- Resource consciousness. Deciding with the knowledge that money, time and energy run out. You already manage training load, recovery and competitive energy. In business they become cash flow, time and the energy of a team. Do you make smart decisions about how to use your time, money and energy?
What keeps you going
The next three are the inner capacities that keep the effort going.
- Self-efficacy. Believing you can carry out the specific tasks a goal needs. In sport that confidence grows one mastered step at a time. In business, small wins build the same sense of “I can do this”. Do you believe you can succeed at specific entrepreneurial tasks?
- Tolerance for uncertainty. Managing nerves and acting when you cannot know the outcome. You compete without knowing the result, and with the risk of injury. The same capacity helps in a market where the data is incomplete and the results are unclear. Can you act even when the outcome is not guaranteed?
- Resilience. Recovering from failure, rejection and obstacles, and taking the lesson with you. Athletic careers are shaped by losses, injuries and deselection. Can you bounce back from setbacks and learn from them?
How you act and connect
The last three turn a mindset into action in the market.
- Initiative and action. Acting without waiting to be told, and owning the outcome. The athlete who trains alone, asks for extra coaching or organises team activities is already showing it. Do you start things without waiting for permission?
- Adaptability. Changing plans, products or direction when conditions change. Injuries, rule changes and new coaches teach it. In business it becomes the ability to change course when customers tell you something is not working. Can you change direction when the evidence says you should?
- Building social capital. Building networks, persuading people and reaching resources through relationships. Athletes have team networks, sponsor relationships and a media profile. Turning them into a business network is a related skill, but a different one. Do you build and maintain meaningful professional relationships?
Which ones has sport already trained?
The tool is careful here. It does not say athletes are natural entrepreneurs. It says the mindset tends to carry over from sport while the business skills lag behind, and it was built to find the gap between the two. Our post on the skills gap shows what that gap looked like in the research.
The part the tool singles out is resilience, which it calls arguably the most developed entrepreneurial trait in athletes. The training kit adds a useful note. None of its 24 courses teaches resilience, and none claims to. Resilience grows through experience and reflection, not instruction, so the kit points to stories, books, podcasts and talks instead.
On social capital the tool adds a caution: having a network is not the same as using it for business, and turning one into the other is “a distinct but related skill”.
Find your own profile
The assessment tool gives you a score for each of the 10 parts, in green, amber or red. Start with the red ones, then the amber ones. The tool’s advice is one you know from training: specificity beats volume.
Then use the training kit. It indexes its stories, courses and resources by mindset part, so you can go straight to the part you want to build.
ENTREMIND is an Erasmus+ Sport partnership co-funded by the European Union (project 101229842).
