Entrepreneurial Competencies and Personal Attributes: Exploring Startup Success in the UAE's Dynamic Business Environment

Abstract

This qualitative study explores how entrepreneurial competencies, personal attributes, startup challenges, and business-environment conditions collectively influence startup success in emerging and multinational economies. Startup success is defined as a multidimensional outcome, including financial sustainability, internal processes, learning and growth, and entrepreneurs’ personal satisfaction. The United Arab Emirates (UAE) provides the empirical context as a state-led, multicultural, and competitively regulated ecosystem. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with 26 startup founders and CEOs, totalling over 600 minutes, and analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Addressing gaps in entrepreneurship literature shaped by Western-centric assumptions, the findings show that competencies such as resilience, adaptability, cultural intelligence, and networking are necessary but not sufficient for sustainable success in environments marked by regulatory complexity, market volatility, and demographic diversity. Although institutional support, innovation hubs, and policy initiatives can facilitate opportunity recognition and scaling, founders also face structural barriers such as limited access to finance, compliance demands, and intense competition, which influence venture trajectories. Startup success is therefore context-dependent, resulting from the alignment of founder competencies with environmental conditions and requiring ongoing adaptation to changing institutional, cultural, and market dynamics. The study refines trait- and ecosystem-based perspectives by integrating context-specific mechanisms. It offers practical insights for entrepreneurs and policymakers aiming to improve the sustainability of early-stage ventures outside Western contexts.