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

A Family Council Can Help Larger Families Stay Connected

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

When Family Businesses Should Think Like Private Equity Firms

by Nadine Kammerlander and David Hoeflmayr / Applied and Practice

Adopting all or even some PE investor strategies can add value and enhance competitiveness, especially when a successor takes over or the company may be sold. Read more...

Your Family’s Mental Model Might Be Fueling Its Conflicts

by Tom Rüsen and Monika Nadler / Practice Insight

Different ways of thinking shape how families make decisions, resolve tensions, and pass leadership across generations. Read more...

Learning to Let Go of a Startup

by Lin Grensing-Pophal / Features

Handing off a family business to the next generation can be difficult, but it doesn’t have to be. Read more...

Nonfamily CEOs Are Most Vulnerable in the Middle Stage of Their Tenure

by Wei Shen, Cecilia Gu, and Lin-Hua Lu / Research Insight

Family businesses tend to give all CEOs time to prove themselves, but are tougher on outsiders who don’t deliver results after a few years. Read more...

by Joseph Astrachan and Claudia Binz Astrachan

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

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

How Family Businesses Survive Unexpected ‘Wild Cards’

by Wojciech Czakon, Monika Hajdas, and Joanna Radomska

Business Families Must Get Real About Growth and Payouts

by Joseph Astrachan and George Manners

Outside Leadership Can Save the Family Business

by Robert Sher

How to Run a Family Business Successfully

by Kerry Hannon