Is Innovation the Key to Family Business Survival?

Devin Deciantis describes the Next Generation as a hidden asset that can help family business adapt to a changing world.

Not all family companies need to innovate, just the ones that want to survive. And as you look at the future, the process of responding to what’s happening in the world around them in terms of the dynamically changing, accelerating pace of change, technological change, innovation that’s happening in the environments that surround these family companies affect the ways in which they need to respond, and the next gen in particular seems to be a unique source, a unique asset within family companies to be able to begin to respond to some of these changing threats. So this is something all companies have to cope with, but in many ways, family companies have a unique tool, a hidden asset in their next generation to the extent that the senior generation can foster that, can encourage success but can also provide permission to fail, I think is really important for these systems.