Create an action plan for developing the core leadership competencies that we have identified from training more than 13,000 social entrepreneurs.  


The Idea2Entrepreneur Talent Tool is an online self-assessment and guided action plan for growing your entrepreneurial leadership skills and capabilities. The tool is designed to guide you through a discovery process with support from a mentor -- ensuring you are ready to take the necessary steps to develop your team and build your social enterprise for greater impact.  

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1. Take the Self-Assessment

The Idea2Entrepreneur Talent Tool is designed to identify the key leadership competencies where you excel and to help you discover key areas for growth. The Self-Assessment will generate a set of scores on key entrepreneurial competencies and give you relevant guiding feedback.

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2. Develop an Action Plan

Review the I2E Talent Self-Assessment Scores and Guiding Feedback you received via email. Then, you can use the Action Plan Worksheet to develop talent development goals and identify action items to help you achieve these goals. 

You may find it helpful to work with a mentor to identify actions you can take immediately and in the future.

Track your progress towards the goals and consider re-taking the I2E Talent Self-Assessment and revise your action plan.

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3. Deepen Your Growth 

Seek out additional resources to help you deepen your growth in the competencies you identified for development. Check out the Resources Gallery below to get you started.


I2E Talent Tool Self-Assessments by Stage

If you're not sure which stage of development your enterprises is in, be sure to take the What Stage Is Your Enterprise? survey. After you receive your results, select the most relevant I2E Talent Tool Self-Assessment below.

Start-up Stage

The following self-assessment is for entrepreneurs leading social enterprises at the start-up stage.

This means that you and your team are focused on creating a blueprint for your business. There needs to be a clear sense of what the business will offer, what it will do and how it will do it. During this stage, your goals should be proving your user or customer need and solution, having a proof of concept of your product or service, and ultimately a business plan. 

Validate Stage

The following self-assessment is for entrepreneurs leading social enterprises at the validate stage.

This means that you and your team are focused on validating the commercial viability and scalability of the business model described in the blueprint. This involves running market trials in which business plan assumptions are tested. This is an iterative process which results in the refinement of the product or services, as well as the business model.

Prepare-to-Scale Stage

The following self-assessment is for entrepreneurs leading social enterprises at the prepare-to-scale stage.

This means that your business is preparing the conditions needed to grow a validated product/service and business model. During this stage, your goals should be working towards achieving operational stability and enhancing the conditions needed for scaling both externally (customer education, supplier reliability, new distribution networks) or internally (hiring skilled personnel).  


Deepen Your Growth with Competency-Specific Resources


NESsT developed the Idea2Entrepreneur Talent Tool with support from the Aspen Network for Development Entrepreneurs, Cisco, The Lemelson Foundation and The Miller Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University.