The National Content Standards for Entrepreneurship Education

There are fifteen major standards, which are divided into the following three major sections:

Entrepreneurial Skills
The unique traits, behaviors and processes that differentiate an entrepreneur from an employee or manager.

Ready Skills
The business, or entrepreneurial, knowledge and skills that are prerequisites or co-requisites for the study of entrepreneurship.

Business Functions
The business activities performed in starting and running a business.

Overlying the Ready Skills and Business Functions are the Entrepreneurial Skills, the processes and traits/behaviors applicable to new ventures and ongoing ventures that create/drive/change economic activity - new markets, new products, new businesses, etc. These non-sequential, often overlapping, stages of the entrepreneurial process are:

Discovery
The stage in the entrepreneurial process in which the entrepreneur generates ideas, recognizes opportunities, and determines the feasibility of ideas, markets, ventures, etc.

Concept Development
The stage in the entrepreneurial process in which the entrepreneur plans the venture, identifies needed resources using a business plan, identifies strategies .to protect intellectual property, etc.

Resourcing
The stage in the entrepreneurial process in which the entrepreneur identifies and acquires the financial, human, and capital resources needed for the venture startup, etc.

Actualization
The stage in the entrepreneurial process in which the entrepreneur operates the venture and utilizes resources to achieve its goals/objectives.

Harvesting
The stage in the entrepreneurial process in which the entrepreneur decides on the venture's future (growth, development, demise).

These five stages of the entrepreneurial process, along with the individual traits and behaviors associated with the successful entrepreneur, comprise the set of "Entrepreneurship Skills" listed in the National Content Standards for Entrepreneurship Education.