Competence Reps Beat Myths

Field Notes

Researchers just stress-tested the EU’s EntreComp framework with STEM students. Surprise: once you control for competence perception, women show the same entrepreneurial intention as men. The gap isn’t ambition—it’s reps, feedback loops and environments that stop gaslighting. Meanwhile the EIC Women Leadership Programme keeps adding deep-tech cohorts across Europe. The signal is louder than the noise: women don’t need pep talks; they need precise drills.

Signal Check

• The study found that competence perception correlates strongly with intention. Build the skill and the confidence arrives naturally.
• The EIC programme pairs coaching with access to investors and corporate partners, but they expect founders to show traction, not just prototypes.
• AI literacy is now table stakes. Founders who can articulate how the Personal Business Trainer supports their workflows impress both evaluators and clients.

Marketing Pulse

Tell better competence stories. Highlight the exact skills your clients built (financial modeling, distribution design, AI prompt craft), not generic “empowerment.” Use the trainer to capture before/after metrics—time to decision, revenue per experiment—and turn them into social proof. Feature sessions where women founders call out nonsense advice. It positions Wave Artisans as the antidote to buzzword-heavy coaching.

Operations Flow

Map competence sets inside the trainer. For each founder, score opportunity spotting, resource orchestration, digital fluency, storytelling and governance. Run monthly retros where you highlight which skill improved and what exercise drove it. This moves conversations away from “confidence” and toward evidence.

Innovation Muscle

Mix analog and AI drills. Pair in-person build days (whiteboards, Post-its, beach walks) with trainer-led prompts that compress research. Encourage founders to document their creative rituals—music cues, surf sessions, journaling—and feed that context into the trainer so suggestions feel personal. Innovation becomes a workout plan, not a mysterious muse.

Experiments for this week

1. Publish a “Competence Ledger” template. Invite founders to grade themselves weekly and note the experiment that shifted each score.
2. Run a “Myth-busting Demo Day” where women founders present the advice they ignored and the results they shipped instead.
3. Add a “ritual log” field to the trainer so mentors can reference the exact conditions (music, time of day, location) that help each founder flow.