Project description
While it is now widely acknowledged that the family business is the most common form of business organisation in most countries, there is still a lack of research and knowledge about this type of firms. The aim of this research project is to investigate continuous entrepreneurship in owner-families and family firms, which will be referred to as transgenerational entrepreneurship. Transgenerational entrepreneurship will be defined as a family's mindset and capability to continue its entrepreneurial legacy of social and economic wealth-creation across the generations. Combining and integrating literature on corporate entrepreneurship and family firms, there will be a study of what characterizes entrepreneurship in owner-families and family firms, as well as how entrepreneurship can be maintained and reproduced across the generations. This means a dual unit of analysis, where the owner-family unit is introduced along with the more traditional firm unit of analysis. The project is part of a global research collaboration between teams from business schools in Europe, North America, and Latin America. All the teams will carry out a similar research project, both theoretically and empirically, within an initiative called Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Practices (STEP), led by Babson College, USA. The research results are directly communicated back to owner-families at yearly summits, where academics, owners, and executives interact to learn from one another.