Entrepreneurship and Small Business Certification

The ESB certification is built to test and validate foundation-level concepts and knowledge in entrepreneurship and small business management. These core concepts include entrepreneurship; recognizing and evaluating opportunities; planning for, starting, and operating a business; marketing and sales; venture capital and seed funding; and financial management.

Country-Specific Exam versus Universal Exam:

  • ESB Country-specific exams test on specific knowledge about doing business in a particular country. Currency and terminology is targeted to specific countries. ESB candidates should select a country-specific exam when available.
  • ESB Universal exams are suitable for any ESB candidate around the world. All currencies are in Euros.

All ESB exams use the same Objective Domains and are delivered through Certiport.

The Entrepreneur
  • Identify the characteristics of entrepreneurs
  • Given a scenario including a self assessment outcome, identify the strengths, weaknesses, and risk tolerance the self assessment identifies and how to compensate with services
  • Given a scenario, recognize a business opportunity
  • Identify the risks, benefits, opportunities, and drawbacks of being an entrepreneur
Opportunity Recognition
  • Identify the benefits and drawbacks of different types of opportunities (e.g., start a new business, buy an existing business, and buy a franchise)
  • Given a scenario, analyze the demand for the goods or service and opportunities in an environment
  • Given a scenario, identify the customers or potential customers for a business
  • Given a scenario, recognize a value proposition
Starting a Business
  • Identify the purposes and value of a business plan
  • Identify the appropriate legal structure, benefits and drawbacks for different legal structures for a business
  • Given a scenario, identify different types of licenses and regulations that are required
  • Identify the benefits and drawbacks of various sources of start-up funding: Equity (friends/family, angels, venture), Debt (bank, credit cards, personal loans), and Grants (government, foundation, corporate)
  • Given a scenario, identify support that is available for the business on a local, state, and federal level
  • Identify the ethical practices and social responsibilities of a business
  • Identify potential exit strategies for a business
Business operations
  • Given a scenario, identify key positions and human capital needs(including compensation and benefits)
  • Given a scenario, determine whether work can be completed by the owner or whether employees or service providers are needed
  • Given a scenario, identify the taxes that are required
  • Given a scenario, identify intellectual property issues of trademarks, copyrights, and patents
  • Given a scenario, identify standard operating procedures (e.g., setup, conduct, internal controls, separation of duties)
  • Given a scenario, identify the factors that lead to sustainability
  • Given a scenario, identify milestones as part of a growth strategy
Marketing and sales
  • Given a scenario, develop a sales strategy and identify characteristics of a successful sale
  • Given a scenario, identify and analyze the costs/benefits of finding customers
  • Given a scenario, identify how to retain customers and develop a relationship with repeat customers
  • Given a scenario, determine value and methods of communication including: web sites, brochures, social media, and advertising
Financial management
  • Given a scenario, interpret basic financial statements such as income statements and balance sheets
  • Given a scenario, identify the factors that influence credit ratings and the importance of a positive credit rating
  • Given a list of expenses, identify which are fixed versus variable
  • Given a scenario, identify the factors that impact the price to the customer
  • Given a scenario, identify and analyze cash flow including: accounts receivable, accounts payable, inventory, and debt
  • Given a scenario, create a cash flow budget
  • Given a scenario, identify the break-even point for the business

Master Certification in Entrepreneurship

The Master Certification in Entrepreneurship is the next step in validating an understanding of essential business principles, but expands the scope to include design thinking. This certification is earned by completing the ESB certification as well as Intuit's Design for Delight (D4D) certification. The D4D certification focuses on three domains surrounding design thinking:

  • Deep Customer Empathy – Understanding customers, their pain points, and reasons for their actions to help innovate and discover solutions.
  • Go Broad to Go Narrow – Brainstorming broad potential solutions and then narrowing those to determine which will most likely delight the customer and solve the problem.
  • Rapid Experiments with Customers – Experimenting and testing solutions with real customers to determine if problems will be solved.

Successfully completing the Design for Delight and the Entrepreneurship in Small Business certifcation will result in one earning the Master Certification in Entrepreneurship.

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