Diagnosis of educational needs and expectations for mentoring entrepreneurial competence: the case of the European food sector

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to contribute to the debate on the entrepreneurial context of the curriculum of business and management training programs by diagnosing the educational needs and expectations of mentors in developing entrepreneurial competence in the European food sector. Design/methodology/approach: Two qualitative methods, Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) and content analysis, were applied to analyze a set of 17 interviews with start-up mentors about their educational needs and expectations. The paper builds on the study by Bisk (2002), who indicated that what entrepreneurs primarily seek from their mentors is career-related advice of a general business nature, not sector-specific. Findings: The study confirms that mentors in the food sector predominantly need managerial competencies and business tools to guide entrepreneurs and start-ups, and there are specific areas of these competencies that need to be addressed in the curricula of professional training programs designed for mentors. Research limitations/implications: The results cannot be generalized to all mentors or each mentoring program, as the sample size was small, the research project was limited to an online format, and the respondents were predominantly recruited by one organization. To further build on the results, studies are recommended to be carried out in other sectors, in other mentoring training programs, as well as in the context of sustainable and entrepreneurial circular economy. Furthermore, research on the mentees’ prospects could also complement the findings. Practical implications: The study offers practical insight into the curriculum of the training programs designed for mentors in the food sector. Originality/value: The study takes an innovative, methodological approach to produce transferable evidence from the combination of conventional text analysis, and Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA), which combined led to the development of an integrative SWOT matrix framework for future mentoring training programs built around the entrepreneurial context. The research results are addressed to educators and academics who design and organize training programs for mentors and support the development of entrepreneurial competencies.