The family business continuity: entrepreneurial processes and heuristics

Abstract

Family business scholars converged to the concept of Transgenerational Entrepreneurship which implies that entrepreneurial families should have entrepreneurs in every generation and entrepreneurial families should be structured around simple rules imprinted by previous generations. However, a structured field research on how the transgenerational transmission of entrepreneurial learnings occurs has not yet been proposed. In this third chapter, how the entrepreneurial learning between generations happens through heuristics is explained. Heuristics are simple rules which are internalized and applied by the next generations. An analysis based on family business case studies was performed, and next generations’ heuristics were defined and categorized.