ÔThere is so much to praise in this important and timely book. Drawing on unique, fresh and intimate qualitative studies of families and the complex histories of their lives and businesses, the book will invigorate entrepreneurial studies with its intricate, theoretically bold and innovative analysis. The author takes us on a sensitive and fascinating journey with these families, and makes an outstanding contribution conceptually, politically, ethically and methodologically to the field, showing us how narratives are not simply methodological tools but ontological resources for gender and identify formation. It is an elegant and refreshing book which will be a rewarding and enlivening read for students and researchers.Õ Ð Elaine Swan, University of Technology Sydney, Australia ÔThoughtful, perceptive, and meticulously researched, Eleanor HamiltonÕs Entrepreneurship across Generations is an important contribution that will help advance the field of family business studies both conceptually and empirically. Based on fascinating field work with families in business and placing ÒfamilyÓ at the very heart of her study, Hamilton shows, through the stories her subjects tell, just how deeply and complexly family and firm are intertwined. A must-read for all those interested in family firm entrepreneurship.Õ Ð Andrew Popp, University of Liverpool Management School, UK Entrepreneurship across Generations examines dimensions of identity, gender and learning to understand the complex fabric of family business. An interpretation of narratives from two generations in five families constitutes entrepreneurship as an inherently social, rather than individual, phenomenon. This enriching book explains how entrepreneurial capacity is shared between generations, showing how learning is embedded within everyday social practice in the family and the business. It explores patriarchal practice and gendered entrepreneurial identities in family business. The author challenges dominant discourses of entrepreneurship. She argues that entrepreneurial identities are mediated by narrative and subject to constant negotiation within and across generations. With a new perspective on entrepreneurship, this insightful study will be essential and supplementary reading for students and practitioners within the field of entrepreneurship and family business.

This book provides recent ideas, insights, facts, evidence, frameworks, and perspectives on how and why entrepreneurial families are successful over generations. The book focuses on how families successfully implement entrepreneurship across generations. That success, it argues, requires entrepreneurship at the level of the family, not only in the businesses the family owns and manages. Written by noted academics and consultants who are authorities on family entrepreneurship, the chapters provide a comprehensive exploration of the characteristics of successful entrepreneurial families, their motivations, how they behave over time, and, suggestions for how business families can encourage and sustain entrepreneurship. This comprehensive look at family entrepreneurship will serve as a fundamental reference text for family business consultants, owners, and scholars.

Discover What Makes Family Businesses Beat the Odds and Thrive over Generations Families are complicated; family businesses even more so. Like other companies, family-run enterprises must develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills. But they must also manage family dynamics that rarely mirror the best practices in the latest Harvard Business Review. Allan Cohen and Pramodita Sharma, scholars with deep professional and personal roots in family businesses, show how enterprising families can transmit the hunger for excellence across generations. Using examples of firms that flourished and those that failed, they describe the practices that characterize entrepreneurial individuals, families, and organizations and offer pragmatic advice that can be tailored to your unique situation.

Introducing a new concept in family businesses Transgenerational Entrepreneurship addresses how these businesses achieve growth and longevity through entrepreneurial activities. It focuses on the resources, capabilities and mindsets that families develop and draw upon in order to be entrepreneurial across generations, and presents findings from an international research collaboration between family business researchers and practitioners. In addition to a comprehensive conceptual chapter, the editors include a unique set of empirical case-based research papers that investigates transgenerational entrepreneurship in different European contexts. They bring together and integrate frontier research on entrepreneurship and family business, as well as provide a basis for future research. Academics, teachers and students in business and management, entrepreneurship and family business will find this path-breaking book of value, as will libraries, policy makers and consultants.

Discover What Makes Family Businesses Beat the Odds and Thrive over Generations Families are complicated; family businesses even more so. Like other companies, family - run enterprises must develop leadership and entrepreneurial skills. But they must also manage family dynamics that rarely mirror the best practices in the latest Harvard Business Review Allan Cohen and Pramodita Sharma, scholars with deep professional and personal roots in family businesses, show how enterprising families can transmit the hunger for excellence across generations. Using examples of firms that flourished and those that failed, they describe the practices that characterize entrepreneurial individuals, families, and organizations and offer pragmatic advice that can be tailored to your unique situation.

Research suggests that children of self-employed parents and children belonging to family businesses are much more likely to pursue entrepreneurial careers. But while nature is a critical driving force behind intergenerational entrepreneurship, nurture seems to be even more important. The next question, and the overarching goal of this dissertation, is how do enterprising families defined as families who own more than one business, but don't necessarily do so together nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs? Of particular importance to discovering the process of intergenerational entrepreneurship, is understanding why some siblings follow an entrepreneurial path while others actively avoid it. Using a constructivist grounded theory approach, 35 family members across eight enterprising families were interviewed. The findings suggest a critical determinant of who becomes an entrepreneur is based on children's entrepreneurial sensemaking, which they form throughout their experiences in childhood and adolescence. Child-specific characteristics, such as entrepreneurial innateness, as well as the presence of family system facilitators, were critical factors that influenced the valence of children's entrepreneurial sensemaking (i.e., negative, positive, balanced), which in turn influenced their career trajectories (i.e., never entrepreneurs, legacy entrepreneurs, open professionals). These findings have important practical implications for the sustainability of enterprising families.

Generation to Generation will help managers understand the special dynamics & challenges that family businesses face as they move through their life cycles. It explains how to handle succession, & the role of non-family professionals.