What Can Scholars of Entrepreneurship Learn From Sound Family Businesses?

Abstract

Scholars of entrepreneurship have focused mostly on founder entrepreneurs, new ventures, venture capital, and entrepreneurial initiatives in larger firms. However, family firms, which account for a majority of new ventures, have received far less prominent attention from the field. Although family businesses, often rightly, have been portrayed as being conservative and even stodgy, many of them are successful and enduring, and enjoy advantages in the business founding, growth, and maturity phases of the life cycle. We discuss the resources that may be responsible for these advantages in successful family firms, and the lessons that may be drawn from such firms for quintessential topics in entrepreneurship such as effectuation, new ventures, venture capital, opportunity platforms, and entrepreneurial orientation.