The Institute for Family Enterprising provides leading-edge thinking in the area of family enterprising and partners with scholars who desire to pursue research and publications on transgenerational entrepreneurship. We define transgenerational entrepreneurship as the entrepreneurial mindset and capabilities that enable family businesses to create new streams of social and economic wealth across many generations.
Our current research focuses on the entrepreneurial orientation of family groups and the relationship to innovation and creating new streams of value for transgenerational entrepreneurship.
Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Practices (STEP) Project
The STEP Project is a global research project founded by Babson College that explores the entrepreneurial process within families’ businesses, and powerful practices for building legacies of social and economic wealth across many generations. The research has launched in Europe and Latin America. For more about IFE and STEP click here.
Family Enterprise Research Conference (FERC)
The Institute for Family Enterprising and the STEP Project are pleased to be collaborating with the FERC Conference. FERC aims to enable scholars to design and develop research projects that are theoretically sound, empirically rigorous, and of practical significance and applicability to family firms. For more about FERC click here.
Published Faculty Research
Dr. Timothy Habbershon – Director, Institute for Family Enterprising
Dr. Tim Habbershon is examining the relationship of the entrepreneurial orientation of family businesses with their innovation capabilities and performance outcomes. Professor Habbershon is a thought leader in applying the resource-based view of the firm to family companies and in establishing a model for family enterprising that creates a nexus between family business and entrepreneurship.
Unified Systems Theory of Family Firms – Journal of Business Venturing (2003)
Enterprising Families Domain – Family Business Review (2002)
A Resource-Based Framework for Assessing the Strategic Advantages of Family Firms – Family Business Review (1999)
Family Based Entrepreneurship and Economic Development: Finding your Familiness Advantage in Doing Business and Doing Good. – The Road from Poverty to Freedom Conference, Grove City College (2005)
Research Studies
American Family Business Survey
Women in Family-Owned Businesses
Improving the Long-Run Survival of Family Firms
For additional information on our current research, please email ife@babson.edu.
