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

Popular Topics

Money

Financing, revenue, profits

Team

Staffing, succession, relationships

Manage

Best practices for running the business

Grow

Increase customers and revenue

Strategy

Making better decisions

Operations

How the best firms run

Recent

Announcing Our 2024-25 Schulze Awards Winners

by Kimberly Eddleston and Mat Hughes / Commentary

These awards recognize exceptional thought leadership, clarity of perspective, and the ability to bridge research and practice. Read more...

Preparing for the Next Generation Starts with Being Investor-Ready

by Michael Paull / Applied and Practice

The most important investor may be your own successors. Investor readiness supports smooth transitions, builds trust, enhances enterprise value, and keeps strategic options open—whether you sell, recapitalize, or stay independent. Read more...

Rom-Coms Can Complicate Your Succession Planning

by Sara E. Miller / Commentary

Unrealistic depictions of the sacrifices and tradeoffs of family business leadership -- streamed repeatedly -- can color younger people’s attitudes towards taking the helm. Read more...

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by Sigrun C. Caspary, Tom Rüsen, and Arist von Schlippe / Research Insight

In Japan, family businesses are encouraged to help one another for the benefit of their shared customers and their community. It has helped them survive setbacks and thrive. Read more...

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Ready to Lead: Building Confidence Across Generations

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From 'Passing Down' to 'Building Up': Rethinking Values in Family Firms

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