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

Define Your Legacy, and Strengthen Your Business and Your Impact

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

The World is Changing Faster Than Your Strategy

by Torsten Pieper, Claudia Binz Astrachan, Francesco Chirico, and Annika Ehlers / Research Insight

Families that learn to use their cohesion, trust, and long-term orientation as strengths can implement strategies more effectively than their non-family peers, especially in times of uncertainty. Read more...

Listening to the Family: The Strategic Value of Surveys

by Claudia Binz Astrachan / Practice Insight

Surveys can reveal differing perspectives, surface hidden tensions, and – when done well – build trust, and serve as an educational opportunity. Read more...

Planning Succession? These 10 Decisions Are Critical

by David Deeds / Applied and Practice

Succession is not a single choice -- It is a chain of choices that interlock and compound. Avoiding any one of them will create friction or ambiguity. Read more...

Family Ownership Can Undermine Financial Health

by Ivan Miroshnychenko, Rui Torres de Oliveira, Alfredo De Massis, and Ruth Überbacher / Research Insight

However, those who invested more in R&D and operated in countries with strong and supportive institutions enjoyed better market capitalizations. Read more...

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

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

by Klaus Lüber and Nadine Kammerlander

How to Plan for a Successful Succession

by Richard Eisenberg

How Family Dynamics Shape Family Businesses

by Joseph Astrachan and Claudia Binz Astrachan

Here Are the Next Gen's Biggest Worries

by Kimberly Eddleston

How to Run a Family Business Successfully

by Kerry Hannon