Entrepreneurs in Every Generation: How Successful Family Businesses Develop Their Next Leaders

Many family firms fail because the entrepreneurial spirit that drove the first generation isn't nurtured and developed in the generations that follow. Sharma and Cohen show how any family firm can create a 'company of founders.'


Companies that are owned and run by families need to develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills just like any other company, but family firms face obstacles that 'hire and fire' companies don't. Family dynamics rarely perfectly mirror the best practices in the latest Harvard Business Review.

So what factors in the family and work environments enable the creation of leaders who share the entrepreneurial fire of the founders? Is there a specific education, training and experiential pathway that tips the odds of entrepreneurial success across generations? How do some firms manage to bypass family conflicts, disparate visions of the future, sibling rivalries, generational transition traps, death and divorces, that seem to mark the demise of so many family businesses?

Cohen and Sharma draw on their deep and extensive research on family businesses to reveal the secrets of enterprising families, using examples of both firms that flourished and those that failed. While this book is written with top leadership in mind, it's especially focused on the needs of the second and third generations. Cohen and Sharma emphasize that the most important skill of all is thinking like an entrepreneur--something that succeeding generations in family firms often miss.