<p>Entrepreneurs’ competencies represent critical intellectual capital assets that enable small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to navigate the dual imperatives of economic performance and environmental sustainability. Yet, within the knowledge economy discourse, limited attention has been paid to how these cognitive and strategic resources interact with digital technologies to shape firms’ transition toward knowledge-based operations, particularly in emerging economies. This study examines how strategic and opportunity recognition competencies influence environmental performance through the lens of knowledge creation and absorption, with a focus on the moderating role of big data analytics (BDA) as a knowledge-processing capability. Grounded in the Dynamic Capabilities View (DCV) and extended through knowledge-based theory, this research posits that entrepreneurial competencies constitute forms of tacit knowledge that, when combined with BDA’s explicit knowledge-processing capacity, determine a firm’s ability to generate eco-innovative outcomes. Using cross-sectional survey data collected in 2023 from 317 managers of manufacturing SMEs in Maputo, Mozambique, the hypotheses were tested via partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The findings reveal that both strategic and opportunity recognition competencies significantly enhance environmental performance, validating their role as foundational intellectual capital. However, BDA negatively moderates the relationship between opportunity recognition competency and environmental performance, while showing no significant moderating effect on strategic competency. These counterintuitive findings illuminate a critical tension in knowledge economy development pathways: the introduction of sophisticated knowledge-processing technologies may temporarily disrupt the tacit knowledge flows that underpin entrepreneurial opportunity exploitation in resource-constrained settings. The study contributes to knowledge economy literature by empirically demonstrating the phenomenon of “asymmetric capability building,” wherein investments in explicit knowledge infrastructure outpace the absorptive capacity required to integrate such technologies with existing intellectual capital. For policymakers and managers, the findings suggest that knowledge economy transitions in emerging contexts require sequenced investments: entrepreneurial cognition must be cultivated before digital knowledge architectures can yield sustainability dividends.</p>