Family, Family Voices, Governance, Ownership
Legacying Together
A Reflection on the 2026 CBS Family Enterprise Conference: Legacying TogetherFriday, April 17thColumbia Business School
Research Findings
Explore cutting-edge research from a range of interdisciplinary global scholars, uncovering the latest trends and insights that can shape the future of family enterprises worldwide.
Family Voices
Hear directly from family firm principals sharing their lived experiences, wisdom, and lessons learned in multigenerational leadership.
Practitioner Perspectives
Gain practical insights from expert advisors, offering real-world applications and strategies to address the evolving needs of family enterprises from those in the trenches.
Ownership
Decisions, Entrepreneurial Leadership & Strategy, Family, Governance, Leadership, Management, Ownership, Research Findings, Strategy
What Our Giving Says About Us Beyond "How Much": What Family Giving Really Signals
A global survey of 525 family firm decision-makers across 21 countries finds that founder identity, whether Missionary or Darwinian, shapes philanthropic behavior across generations. Missionary founders, driven by social purpose, produce giving that grows stronger over time as their legacy is idealized and absorbed into family identity. Darwinian founders, motivated by competitive logic, engage in more reputational giving that can shift with other priorities. Transgenerational control intentions further complicate the picture: families focused on succession may quietly redirect philanthropic energy inward. For advisors, the implication is clear: identity, not just structure, determines whether family giving becomes a lasting legacy or a secondary priority. Read the full article, What Our Giving Says About Us, and explore the Richards & Kammerlander study in Family Business Review.
Family, Family Voices, Governance, Ownership
Global Immersion Program: CAFE in Italy — Spring Break 2026
What does it truly take to advise a family enterprise? This spring break, 19 second-year MBA students set out to find the answer firsthand. Through Columbia Business School's Consulting and Advising Family Enterprises (CAFE) program, developed in partnership with the Jerome A. Chazen Institute for Global Business, students traveled across five cities and visited ten organizations, moving through Milan, Parma, Rimini, Ravenna, and Florence to meet the families and leaders behind Vibram, Barilla, Ferragamo, Nuova Energia Holding, Castello di Monsanto, Famiglia Cecchi, and Bocconi University, among others. Candid conversations on governance, succession, and legacy unfolded naturally within Italy's culture of trust and authenticity, proving once again to be the perfect classroom for this kind of relational learning.
Decisions, Entrepreneurial Leadership & Strategy, Family, Governance, Leadership, Management, Ownership, Research Findings, Strategy
The Cost of Control: Is Your Legacy Fueling “Innovation Reluctance”?
A large-scale global study of 3,322 publicly listed firms across 32 OECD countries finds that family involvement is, on average, associated with lower market valuation, particularly when renewal investment is weak or governance rigor is unclear. While family ownership is discounted less in strong institutional environments, the valuation penalty tied to family CEOs persists across contexts. Crucially, underinvestment in R&D partially explains this performance gap, suggesting that visible, disciplined innovation is a key credibility signal to markets.For family enterprises, the message is not anti-control. It is structural: legacy, governance, and geography determine whether family influence fuels long-term value or quietly contributes to “innovation reluctance.”
Entertainment
Entertainment
Family Business News
Frozen in Time: What a New Jersey Vegetable Empire Teaches Us About Succession
John Seabrook's The Spinach King, a New York Times Notable Book of 2025 and New Yorker Best Book of the Year, traces four generations of his own family's frozen-vegetable empire. It is a story of succession, sibling dynamics, and legacy, told with humor, honesty, and the warmth of a reporter coming home.
Entertainment
Family Business News
Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost
Stiller & Meara: Nothing Is Lost invites viewers into the creative and personal world of comedians Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, the parents of filmmaker Ben Stiller. Directed by their son, the documentary traces their careers, partnership, and influence through archival material and reflection, exploring how legacy is shaped not only by professional success but also by family relationships, memory, and generational continuity. It is an intimate look at how stories, values, and identity are carried forward across generations.
Entertainment
Family Business News
The Merchants of Joy: The Families Who Run New York’s Christmas Tree Market
The Merchants of Joy invites viewers into the world of the five family enterprises that bring New York its Christmas trees each year. The documentary reveals how these families balance legacy, logistics, and leadership in a business that appears simple from the sidewalk but is far more intricate behind the scenes. It is an intimate look at the family decision-making that shapes one of the city’s most beloved holiday traditions.
Entertainment
Family Business News
Vision, Culture, and Collapse: A Family Enterprise Look at WeWork
As families think more intentionally about the systems and behaviors that shape long-term resilience, the WeWork story offers a striking contemporary case study. This Family Enterprise Entertainment feature explores how decision-making, governance, and risk played out inside one of the fastest-scaling modern enterprises. Through the Apple TV+ series WeCrashed, starring Anne Hathaway and Jared Leto, and Hulu’s documentary WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn, we look at how a couple’s shared vision and leadership style influenced culture, accelerated growth, and exposed the organization to avoidable vulnerabilities. Together, these works highlight how the structures around leadership — or the lack of them — can determine whether an ambitious enterprise thrives or unravels. Click to read the full piece.