Entrepreneurial intention is a widely researched topic among entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners, and it has often been used as a proxy for entrepreneurial action (Meoli et al. 2020). According to McMullen and Shepherd (2006), intention is a combination of beliefs and desires, ‘Knowledge influences beliefs about what to do, while motivation drives one’s desire to act’. Intentions are commonly studied through the TPB, which remains a primary conceptual framework for examining entrepreneurial intention (Batista-Canino et al. 2024; Meoli et al. 2020).

Theory of Planned Behaviour suggests that intention is influenced by three antecedents: (1) attitudes toward the behaviour, (2) subjective norms and (3) perceived behavioural control (Shirokova et al. 2016). In entrepreneurship, attitudes capture whether entrepreneurship is perceived as desirable or valuable; subjective norms capture social support, pressure or scepticism from family, peers, mentors and communities and perceived behavioural control captures the individual’s confidence in their capacity to start and sustain a venture. These constructs are useful for explaining intention formation, but they are less complete in explaining why intention may not become action.

Entrepreneurial action refers to the range of activities individuals engage in when creating or developing a venture (Duong 2022). It includes generating ideas, testing concepts, developing products or services, mobilising resources, negotiating with stakeholders, building prototypes, acquiring customers and initiating new ventures (Ripolles & Blesa 2023). Although action does not originate outside intention, intention does not automatically result in action (Gieure, Del Mar Benavides-Espinosa & Roig-Dobón 2020; Shaver 2012; Shirokova et al. 2016).

Entrepreneurial action can also be understood through the Rubicon model, which differentiates pre-decision, post-decision and pre-action, action and post-action phases (Brandstätter et al. 2003; Delanoë-Gueguen & Fayolle 2019). This model is useful because it places the present study in the post-intention zone, where individuals have moved beyond general desirability but must still mobilise resources, manage fear, make decisions and enact concrete entrepreneurial behaviour. Recent action-process work similarly emphasises that entrepreneurial action unfolds over time and under uncertainty rather than as a single discrete event (Dlamini & Botha 2023; Frese & Gielnik 2023; Wood, Bakker & Fisher 2021).

Forming intentions and planning to start a business are not sufficient to make one an entrepreneur (McMullen & Shepherd 2006). Roos and Botha (2022) imply that entrepreneurial intentions screen individuals who plan to be entrepreneurs from those who are not interested in pursuing entrepreneurship. Yet behavioural intentions explain only part of the variance in behaviour (Shirokova et al. 2016), which means the post-intention transition requires additional explanation. One explanation is that entrepreneurial action is dynamic, uncertain and temporally extended (Wood et al. 2021).

Across a variety of studies on entrepreneurial intention and action, it was identified that a fraction of the people who desire to become entrepreneurs are unable to bridge the gap between intention and action (Ripolles & Blesa 2023; Shirokova et al. 2016). Van Gelderen et al. (2018) stated that of the 422 participants who had some level of intention, only 30% took no action and 16% had businesses that were fully operational or closed down. This study revealed that implementation plans, which specify when, where and how actions will be taken, play a crucial role in translating entrepreneurial intention into action (Van Gelderen et al. 2018). Previous studies on the intention-action gap have increased the relevance of research that focuses exclusively on entrepreneurial intentions. These studies further queried the degree to which the factors influence whether the intention will transform into an effective action, but such research is deficient (Lihua 2022).

Man, Lau and Chan (2002) define entrepreneurial competencies as higher-level characteristics encompassing traits, skills and knowledge that enable an entrepreneur to perform a job role successfully. These competencies include opportunity, relationship, conceptual, organising, strategic and commitment competencies (Man, Lau & Snape 2008), as well as self-knowledge, perseverance, decisiveness and networking (Kyndt & Baert 2015). Competencies are not themselves entrepreneurial activities; rather, they are the means through which entrepreneurs execute activities (Mitchelmore & Rowley 2010).

From a process perspective, possessing competencies does not automatically make an individual entrepreneurially competent. Competence becomes visible when an individual applies knowledge, skills and attitudes to initiate or sustain venture-related action. Existing research has linked competencies to early nascent entrepreneurship and venture creation (Carruthers et al. 2019; González-López et al. 2021), but less is known about how competencies operate specifically at the threshold between intention and action. This study, therefore, conceptualises competencies as phase-specific transition resources.

Entrepreneurship education and training are widely recognised as important for strengthening entrepreneurial attitudes, self-efficacy and intention (Al-Qadasi et al. 2024; Bae et al. 2014; Ripolles & Blesa 2023). Competencies can also be developed through structured training, experiential learning and repeated exposure to entrepreneurial tasks. In this study, we distinguish between entrepreneurship training and entrepreneurial training. Entrepreneurship training refers to structured learning about venture creation, including business planning, finance, marketing, opportunity identification and business management. Entrepreneurial training is broader and focuses on cultivating mindset, agency, resilience, initiative, opportunity orientation and the ability to act under uncertainty. This distinction matters because participants were not only exposed to business knowledge but also exposed to developmental activities intended to build confidence, problem-solving, networking and entrepreneurial self-belief. Accordingly, training is treated as a developmental context through which entrepreneurial competencies may be cultivated, rather than as a standardised intervention that automatically causes entrepreneurial action.

This study integrates TPB and the Rubicon and action-phase perspective into a single explanatory chain. Theory of Planned Behaviour explains the formation of entrepreneurial intention through attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control (Ajzen 1991). The Rubicon and action-phase model explains movement from intention to pre-action, action and post-action evaluation (Brandstätter et al. 2003; Delanoë-Gueguen & Fayolle 2019). Entrepreneurial competencies explain what enables or constrains this movement, while emotions explain why momentum may accelerate, stall, exit or revert. In line with the emotions literature, affective states such as joy and fear can influence how entrepreneurs evaluate and exploit opportunities (Grichnik et al. 2010).

Within this chain, existing entrepreneurial competency categories can be linked to TPB at a generic level. Opportunity and conceptual competencies help individuals evaluate the desirability, feasibility and value of potential venture ideas and therefore connect to attitudes toward entrepreneurship. Relationship and networking competencies connect to subjective norms because they shape access to social approval, role models, legitimacy, information and resources. Organising, strategic and commitment competencies connect to perceived behavioural control because they strengthen the individual’s capacity to plan, mobilise resources, persist and act under uncertainty. Taken together, TPB, action-phase logic, competency theory and the emotions literature provide a conceptual basis for examining how entrepreneurial intention may, or may not, become entrepreneurial action.

This study employed a qualitative research design to explore entrepreneurial competencies in the intention-action transition. A qualitative approach is appropriate for explaining entrepreneurs’ practical experiences, sensemaking processes and interactions within specific contexts (Hlady-Rispal, Fayolle & Gartner 2021; Van Burg et al. 2022). The unit of analysis was the individual, with attention given to youth who transitioned into entrepreneurship, those who engaged partially, those who exited and those who retained intention without venture enactment.

The study focused on youth who had participated in entrepreneurship training. Prior training was used as a purposive sampling criterion because it indicated exposure to entrepreneurship as a possible career pathway and enabled the study to examine individuals who had formed or had previously formed entrepreneurial intention. The study does not treat the training programmes as a standardised intervention and does not claim to measure their causal effect. This clarification is important because participants attended different programmes across different years and providers. The programmes are therefore treated as contextual exposure rather than as a controlled intervention.

At the time of the interviews, participants were required to fall within the South African youth age category. The retained dataset included 25 participants in different stages of their entrepreneurial journeys. Available demographic descriptors are reported in Table 1. The dataset contains gender, year of training, current category and transition outcome.

The training years ranged from 2008 to 2023. This 15-year spread was retained because the study seeks to understand transition pathways rather than immediate programme outcomes. Entrepreneurial scholars recommend evaluating after a prolonged period following the attainment of training, because intentions to act take time to materialise (Joensuu-Salo, Viljamaa & Varamäki 2020). The spread allowed the analysis to include recent intention, early action, side-hustling, full venture enactment, exit and reversion. However, the difference in time since training may shape participants’ opportunities to act, fail, re-enter or reinterpret their entrepreneurial journeys. Time since training is therefore treated as a contextual factor and acknowledged as a limitation rather than ignored.

Participants attended youth entrepreneurship or enterprise-development programmes delivered by non-governmental organisations, private-sector partners or youth-development platforms. Although these programmes differed in duration, pedagogy and provider, they shared a broad entrepreneurship-development orientation: exposing participants to entrepreneurship as a career option, opportunity identification, business skills, confidence building, networking, mentorship and/or venture development. The study’s premise is therefore not that all participants received identical training, but that they had sufficient exposure to entrepreneurship to reflect meaningfully on the transition from intention to action.

The interview guide began with general questions to understand participants’ entrepreneurial journeys, followed by questions on training exposure, intention, entrepreneurial activity, barriers, enablers, competencies, social support, fear, resource access and future orientation. These areas were informed by TPB sensitising concepts: (1) attitudes towards entrepreneurship, (2) subjective norms and (3) perceived behavioural control. The semi-structured format allowed reciprocal interaction between participant and interviewer and enabled follow-up questions based on participants’ responses (Kallio et al. 2016). Interviews were conducted online and in person, lasted between 45 min and 1 h and were conducted from September 2024 to July 2025.

Before data collection commenced, ethical clearance was obtained from the relevant university. Participants were informed that participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw at any time. Confidentiality and anonymity were assured. Permission to record interviews was requested at the start of each interview. Written consent was obtained for in-person interviews and verbal consent for online interviews where written consent was difficult to obtain. All participants were older than 18 years and could consent to participate.

The data were analysed using thematic analysis, which is a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns or themes (Braun & Clarke 2006). The analysis followed a hybrid logic. Firstly, deductive sensitising concepts were drawn from TPB, particularly attitudes, subjective norms and perceived behavioural control, and from intention-action literature on fear, self-regulation, action uncertainty and implementation intentions. These concepts guided attention to how participants described the desirability of entrepreneurship, social encouragement or pressure, perceived capability, fear, resource constraints and action-taking.

Secondly, inductive coding was used to identify patterns emerging from participants’ accounts. Codes were grouped into categories and then into themes. Through this process, four competency themes were developed: (1) entrepreneurial mindset, (2) entrepreneurial connectedness, (3) psychosocial resilience and (4) entrepreneurial agency. This hybrid approach allowed the analysis to remain theoretically informed while preserving the inductive richness of participants’ experiences. Interview data were supplemented by open-forum data in which participants shared their entrepreneurial journeys, thereby strengthening triangulation and trustworthiness.

Ethical clearance to conduct this study was obtained from the GIBS MBA Research Ethical Clearance Committee, Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, on 26 August 2024. No ethics approval number was supplied on the approval letter.

Entrepreneurial mindset refers to opportunity orientation, self-belief, problem-solving orientation and willingness to imagine entrepreneurship as a viable pathway. The findings show that participants required an entrepreneurial mindset consisting of self-belief, entrepreneurial skills and practical experience to transition. One participant described the entrepreneurial mindset as:

The most important skill that triggered action was the ability to solve problems and perceive problems as opportunities. This mindset energised participants and generated entrepreneurial thrill, particularly when participants imagined creating something new and seeing it used by others:

However, the findings also show that mindset alone did not guarantee transition. Some non-transitioners had entrepreneurial exposure and self-belief but delayed action because they wanted to build work experience, reduce risk or stabilise family responsibilities. This suggests that mindset is a necessary but insufficient transition resource: it stimulates intention and opportunity recognition but requires connectedness, resilience and agency to become action:

Entrepreneurial connectedness refers to the ability to access, build and mobilise formal and informal networks, including family, peers, mentors, customers and institutional actors. Networking gave participants access to learning, customers, opportunities, moral support and mentorship. It also helped some participants convert intention into concrete action by providing practical knowledge and social legitimacy:

Connectedness also appeared among participants who did not transition, which again suggests that the presence of a competency is not sufficient unless it is mobilised towards action. Participants who transitioned used networks to obtain practical guidance, market access or entrepreneurial confidence. Participants who did not transition often valued networking but did not convert it into venture enactment:

Psychosocial resilience refers to the capacity to withstand fear of failure, social doubt, negative perceptions and emotional discouragement during the transition process. Participants reported that young entrepreneurs often face scepticism, low trust and social judgement. These pressures affected perceived behavioural control and contributed to entrepreneurial dipping among some participants:

Transitioners did not necessarily experience fewer fears or social barriers; rather, they demonstrated greater ability to persist despite them. Resilience, therefore, helped participants move through entrepreneurial dipping instead of withdrawing from action. Non-transitioners, by contrast, often described fear of failure, social judgement, financial loss or uncertainty as reasons to delay action:

Entrepreneurial agency refers to the capacity to act despite uncertainty, limited resources, institutional friction and environmental constraints. The agency was most visible when participants moved from recognising barriers to finding ways around them. This included developing informal and formal funding channels, approaching potential customers, starting small, entering side-hustles or re-entering entrepreneurship after failure:

Agency also helps distinguish internal barriers from external barriers. Internal barriers included fear of failure, lack of confidence, reluctance to take risk and emotional exhaustion. External barriers included access to funding, weak institutional support, bureaucratic friction, market uncertainty and political obstacles. The transition depended on how participants interpreted and acted in relation to these barriers. Where barriers were experienced as final constraints, entrepreneurial dipping led to delay, exit or reversion. Where barriers were treated as conditions to be navigated, agency supported action:

The results show that entrepreneurial competencies contributed to different modes of transition. Some participants enacted full ventures, some engaged partially through side-hustling, some exited entrepreneurial action, and others reverted to intention after failure or contextual constraint. The comparative pattern is summarised in Table 3.

This comparison shows that mindset and connectedness were widely present, but transition depended on whether participants mobilised these competencies together with resilience and agency. In TPB terms, the findings suggest that favourable attitudes and supportive norms must be translated into perceived and enacted behavioural control. The action-phase perspective further shows that movement is not linear: participants can move from intention to action, from action to exit or from exit back to intention:

The findings extend TPB by showing that favourable attitudes, supportive norms and perceived behavioural control do not automatically result in entrepreneurial action. Entrepreneurship training may strengthen the attitudinal, normative and perceived control conditions associated with entrepreneurial intention, but the post-intention transition also requires competencies that enable action under uncertainty (Al-Qadasi et al. 2024; Bae et al. 2014; Ripolles & Blesa 2023). Entrepreneurial mindset maps most closely onto attitudes because it reflects opportunity orientation, self-belief and the perceived desirability of creating value. Entrepreneurial connectedness maps onto subjective norms because networks, mentors, family and peers shape whether entrepreneurship is socially reinforced or discouraged. Psychosocial resilience and entrepreneurial agency map onto perceived behavioural control because they influence whether young people believe they can act despite uncertainty, fear, resource constraints and institutional friction.

The study, therefore, suggests that competencies translate TPB constructs into action, while emotions shape the momentum of this transition. Building on Grichnik et al. (2010), who show that joy can positively influence opportunity evaluation while fear can negatively influence opportunity exploitation, our study shows that entrepreneurial thrill energises action when participants experience excitement, possibility and confidence. Entrepreneurial dipping interrupts action when fear, social doubt, economic uncertainty or institutional barriers reduce confidence and perceived feasibility. This self-regulatory mechanism helps explain why participants with similar intentions experienced divergent outcomes: full venture enactment, side-hustling, exit or reversion to intention (Kautonen, Van Gelderen & Fink 2015).

The findings should not be interpreted as suggesting that entrepreneurship training is unimportant. On the contrary, prior research has shown that entrepreneurship education and training can strengthen entrepreneurial attitudes, intentions, self-efficacy and action readiness (Al-Qadasi et al. 2024; Bae et al. 2014; Ripolles & Blesa 2023). The contribution of this study is to clarify how such training may matter in the post-intention phase. Training may provide participants with the language of entrepreneurship, practical exposure, confidence, opportunity recognition skills and access to networks. These elements help explain why the entrepreneurial mindset and connectedness emerged as important transition resources. They should therefore be understood not as fixed personality traits, but as competencies that can be cultivated through training and then activated when individuals move from intention towards action.

This interpretation also highlights the emotional dimension of the transition. Emotions influence how entrepreneurs evaluate and exploit opportunities, with positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm and excitement supporting opportunity evaluation and action, while fear can heighten perceptions of risk and uncertainty (Foo 2011; Grichnik et al. 2010). In this study, mindset and connectedness appeared to generate positive emotional momentum by helping participants see opportunities as desirable, personally meaningful and socially supported. However, positive emotion alone did not always carry participants into sustained action. When participants encountered rejection, weak market trust, funding constraints or institutional uncertainty, fear and doubt became more salient. At that point, psychosocial resilience and entrepreneurial agency became necessary to sustain movement from intention into action.

Psychosocial resilience and agency were especially important when participants encountered entrepreneurial dipping. Dipping occurred when social scepticism, fear of failure, institutional complexity, funding constraints or economic uncertainty weakened motivation and perceived feasibility. Resilience helped participants withstand these pressures, while agency enabled them to act despite them. This finding extends work on fear of failure, self-regulation and action uncertainty (Duong 2022; Frese & Gielnik 2023; Van Gelderen et al. 2018) by showing how emotional interruption can be managed through competence mobilisation.

Entrepreneurial agency further strengthens the action-process contribution. Agency was not simply optimism or confidence; it involved decision-making under constraint, resourcefulness, rejection tolerance and willingness to start with available means. This resonates with broader work on entrepreneurial agency and effectual action (Bandura 2001; McMullen, Brownell & Adams 2021; Sarasvathy 2001).

The findings show that the intention-action transition is cyclical rather than linear (Joensuu-Salo et al. 2020). Some participants moved fully into entrepreneurship; others engaged partially through side-hustles; some exited action and others reverted to intention after failure, risk or contextual blockage. Reversion should not be read simply as failure. In some cases, it represented continued entrepreneurial orientation, learning, waiting, or preparation for later action. This cyclical view strengthens the Rubicon and action-phase lens by showing that individuals can cross, retreat from and re-approach the entrepreneurial threshold over time (Brandstätter et al. 2003; Delanoë-Gueguen & Fayolle 2019).

Entrepreneurship training institutions should map competencies to the phase-specific challenges of the intention-action transition. In the intention formation phase, programmes should develop entrepreneurial mindset through opportunity identification, problem-solving, entrepreneurial identity and self-belief. In the pre-action-phase, programmes should strengthen connectedness by giving participants access to mentors, peer networks, customers, alumni entrepreneurs and ecosystem actors. In the early action-phase, programmes should develop psychosocial resilience by preparing participants for rejection, fear of failure, social doubt and setbacks. In resource-constrained phases, programmes should strengthen entrepreneurial agency by teaching effectual action, bootstrapping, resource mobilisation, regulatory navigation and decision-making under uncertainty.

This phase-specific design moves entrepreneurship education beyond awareness and intention formation toward transition support. It also responds to the South African context, where young entrepreneurs often confront low trust, weak networks, funding constraints and institutional uncertainty.

Similar to most qualitative studies, this research is limited by its qualitative design, sample size and focus on young people who had undergone entrepreneurship training. The training programmes were not standardised across providers, duration, content, pedagogy or year of attendance. The study, therefore, does not claim that a particular training model caused entrepreneurial action. Instead, training was used as a purposive sampling criterion and contextual exposure. Future research could compare standardised and non-standardised entrepreneurship programmes to examine how different pedagogical approaches influence transition outcomes.

The wide spread in training years is another limitation. Participants trained between 2008 and 2023 had different amounts of time to start, pause, fail, re-enter or reinterpret entrepreneurship. Future longitudinal studies should examine how entrepreneurial competencies evolve over time and how intention, action, exit and reversion unfold across multiple phases. Finally, the study introduced linkages between entrepreneurial competencies and emotions. Future research could examine entrepreneurial thrill and dipping across different contexts and test whether these emotional states mediate or moderate the relationship between competencies and entrepreneurial action.