Learning in the Classroom and Beyond

August 18, 2025 - Issue #148

Family Business Professors: 40 Ways to Energize Your Class These free classroom exercises, interviews and other resources will add new energy, fun and inspiration to your students' course work.

What Family Firms Can Teach Us About Work-Life Balance Blurring work and personal lives can lead to stress and exhaustion. Family businesses do these four things to create healthier boundaries.

Family Firms: The Time to Learn About AI is Now Like the telephone or the internet, AI is here to stay, and we need to learn how to work with it.

Helping Next-Gens Envision Their Family Firm’s Future Success This classroom exercise seeks to motivate future family firm leaders to think ahead and design a holistic vision of their family firm in 10-15 years, covering many different (and potentially conflicting) aspects of it.

Growing Pains: Helping a Family Office to Evolve The Single Family Office should be a strategic partner that ensures future stability, but this family saw them as a piggybank.

The Psychology of Effective Exit Planning: A Guide for Families and Advisors Family firms can help the next generation move forward by understanding and supporting the emotional aspects of the exit for the current leader.

Team Exercise: How Parenting Styles Affect The Next Generation This experiential exercise is designed to enhance student learning about the four parenting styles and how they affect the dynamics within the family firm.

ESG Essentials For Family Firms ‘ESG is an existential issue. Businesses that don’t demonstrate their commitment to sustainable practices could be punished by consumers, the media and even regulators.’

CEOs Who've Been Mentored Achieve Better Financial Results Family firms where the departing CEO has mentored the successor enjoyed stronger return on assets.

A New Way to Resolve Extreme Conflict in Family Businesses Family members may feel “trapped” in conflicts, unable to resolve substantive issues without damaging their familial relationships. This often leads to disputes that persist for decades.

Why Don't You Educate Your Owners? Everyone agrees that families should train members to become competent owners and stewards of the family business – but few of them actually walk the talk.

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Learn to Defend Your Family Firm

What Business Owners Can Learn From World War II Strategic Bombing

Addressing Substance Use Disorders in a Family Enterprise

Cross-Generational Partnerships Can Be Magical for Business

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Recent

Things to Consider When Transferring Family Business Ownership

by Susan Lanz, Gary Burke, Kajsa Haag, and Omid Omidvar / Research Insight

Family business succession involves transferring ownership as well as management. Family circumstances and past events lead to three types of ownership transfers. Read more...

Will Your Successors See Themselves as Heirs or Entrepreneurs?

by Ganlin Mia Li, Bingbing Ge, and Junsheng Dou / Research Insight

Mentoring plays a huge role in shaping how the next generation views the role of family business leader, a study in China shows. Read more...

Family Business Leaders' Fear of Failure Can Inhibit Next Gens

by Seyyede Sharare Bagherian, Sonia M. Strano, Sohrab Soleimanof, Jon Carr, and S. Alireza Feyzbaksh / Research Insight

When parents openly display fear of failing, it can unintentionally portray entrepreneurship as unsafe, undesirable, or even shameful. This doesn't help their successors or the business. Read more...

Are the 'Best Practices' All Wrong for Your Family Business?

by Luciana Lucena de Lima and María José Parada / Research Insight

The best processes and systems come not from outside advisers and experts, but from how families actually live, relate to one another, and make decisions. Read more...

by Ritch Sorenson

Consumers Love Local Brands. That's Good News For Family Businesses

by Philipp Jaufenthaler, Andreas Kallmuenzer, Sascha Kraus, and Alfredo De Massis

When entrepreneurs raise entrepreneurs

by Nadine Kammerlander and Larissa Leitner

How Family Dynamics Shape Family Businesses

by Joseph Astrachan and Claudia Binz Astrachan

Family Business Succession Planning: 10 Golden Rules

by Tom Rüsen, Torsten Groth, and Arist von Schlippe

The Biggest Mistakes Family Businesses Make With Their Boards

by Kimberly Eddleston