Identifying and prioritizing rural entrepreneurship skills: application of artificial neural network

Nowadays, expanding entrepreneurship culture which depends on nurturing skills, abilities and entrepreneurial capabilities in societies and providing appropriate ethical business setting is regarded as one of the main factors for the economic development of societies. Thus, identifying entrepreneurial traits, skills, and abilities and particularly rural entrepreneurial competencies can be of great help to advance this issue. Therefore, the main objective of the present descriptive study is to identify and prioritize rural entrepreneurship skills. Key informants who participated in this research study were seven academic rural development experts who were selected based on Judgement (or Purposive) sampling to achieve theoretical saturation. The archival research technique was used to elicit and specify rural entrepreneurial skills, and then the structured protocols were used to collect information regarding the importance of the elicited skills. Data processing was done using the Artificial Neural Network technique in the MATLAB software. The results showed that social relationships, marketing and customer management skills, strategic planning, business startup and administration, and risk management ranked first to fifth, respectively. Among the five categories of entrepreneurship skills, “opportunity skills” and “management skills” ranked first and last, respectively. Some suggestions are provided in order to develop rural entrepreneurial skills based on the results obtained in this research study.