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

Before You Create a Family Office, Prepare the Next Generation

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

Why Family Businesses Shouldn't Always Listen to Wall Street

by Douglas Hassell and Kimberly Eddleston / Applied and Practice

What Nordstrom, Mars, Dillards and Patagonia can teach family businesses about ownership structure Read more...

Selling the Family Business? Prepare the Family for What Comes Next

by Susana Quintás / Applied and Practice

A business sale changes more than ownership. Families must also rethink governance, roles, wealth, identity, and purpose after the company is gone. Read more...

How Family Business Succession Shapes Innovation in the Next Generation

by Ludovica Del Barone, Maria Annosi, Filomena Buonocore, and Evelyn Micelotta / Research Insight

Research on 16 family businesses reveals why some successors build on the previous generation’s innovations while others rarely or never innovate. Read more...

When Political Differences Threaten the Family Business

by Paul Edelman / Practice Insight

Political differences can turn dangerous when family members begin dismissing one another’s business judgment based on political identity. Read more...

by Joseph Astrachan and Claudia Binz Astrachan

Let the Next Generation of Family Firm Leaders Chart Their Own Path

by Klaus Lüber and Nadine Kammerlander

5 Practical Tips for Making Business Decisions With Family Members

by Rostyslav Vovk

How Family Businesses Can Avoid Conflict Between Family and Business Roles

by Kerry Hannon

Things to Consider When Transferring Family Business Ownership

by Susan Lanz, Gary Burke, Kajsa Haag, and Omid Omidvar

Why Family Businesses Need Outside Leaders to Survive Across Generations

by Robert Sher