Upping your family's entrepreneurial game

Abstract

Business families who achieve great wealth and hold onto it for generations know the secret is not to rest on your laurels, but to continually promote the entrepreneurial spirit that led to their initial success. For business families who hope to continue for generations to come, inculcating that entrepreneurial drive not only helps the younger generation grow and develop as individuals, it can also help ensure that the collective family business continues to flourish. Instilling entrepreneurial drive in general isn't easy. But doing it successfully in a family business can be even more challenging. It's easy to get lost in a sea of questions about how to develop this drive without creating unnecessary conflict and complexity-or even to ignore the effort altogether, as if somehow entrepreneurship is in your family's genes and will emerge through serendipity. The truth is, talent alone is not enough to turn a great idea into an enterprising business. The innate drive has to be there and the right foundations have to be in place for the spark to catch. This chapter introduces the four foundations business families must balance to instill entrepreneurial drive and reinforces them with anecdotes from real-life examples.