Special Issue: Our Best Teaching Advice

September 13, 2021 - Issue #38

Want to Give Your Entrepreneurship Students Real-World Experience? Try Consulting Projects Students gain exposure to the inner-workings of a business, while entrepreneurs receive a fresh perspective, academic insight and assistance.

Future Family Business Owners Can Learn to Manage Conflict This classroom exercise dissects the five approaches to managing disputes, and their likely outcomes.

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.

Confidentiality Agreements Promote Candor in Family Business Classes For students to share their own good and bad family experiences in a family business class, confidentiality is essential.

Real-Life Drama: Creating a TV Series Based on a Family Business From the "director's chair," students illustrate the challenges of the family firm, and what makes a good one.

To Engage Business Students, Roll Out 'the Barrels' A variation of the childhood "choose your own adventure books" improves understanding of succession planning, governance and ethics.

Videos for the Global Family Business Community These are challenging times for family businesses. These videos share best practices that help business owners, professors and students weather the crisis and manage what comes next.

Design Remote Learning to Help Students Feel Connected Done right, online teaching can help students actually engage more with their professors and with one another.

Learn to Defend Your Family Firm This classroom exercise helps future family firm members learn to anticipate outside threats to their business and defend it.

Search & Save Enter search below to create an easy reading list

Designing and Experiencing the Family Business Advisory

Acres of Diamonds: Advantages of Working in Your Family Business

Why Didn’t I Think of That? A Classroom Exercise for Developing Entrepreneurial Thinking

Involve Next-Gens in Developing Your Social Media Policy

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

Family Businesses Can Learn From the Battling Brothers of Oasis

by Salvatore Sciascia / Commentary

Fighting caused Liam and Noel Gallagher to throw away 18 years of work. Family firms must do these five things to avoid the same fate. Read more...

Employees With Toxic Traits Can Still Be An Asset at Family Firms

by Benjamin McLarty and Daniel T. Holt / Research Insight

The emotional connection that families have with their companies can encourage good performance -- even from employees with narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. Read more...

'Performance-Enhancing Vices': Good for Business, Bad for Relationships

by Kimberly Eddleston and David Werdiger / Commentary

Advisor and author David Werdiger talks about the business benefits and personal drawbacks of being selfish and stubborn. Read more...

Family History Can Be Repurposed to Serve Today's Challenges

by Christina Lubinski and William Gartner / Research Insight

Family firms often frame their history as a tale of generations (e.g., first, second, third – generation). This approach has become so ingrained in how we think about family and organizational Read more...

by Valeria Alterman and Ariane Froidevaux

How Family Dynamics Shape Family Businesses

by Joseph Astrachan and Claudia Binz Astrachan

How to Run a Family Business Successfully

by Kerry Hannon

The Biggest Mistakes Family Businesses Make With Their Boards

by Kimberly Eddleston

How to Plan for a Successful Succession

by Richard Eisenberg

How Do Owners of Family Business Portfolios Restructure Poorly Performing Firms?

by Marina Palm, Vanessa Diaz Moriana, and Nadine Kammerlander