The Enduring Enterprise
How Family Businesses Thrive in Turbulent Conditions
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
Family businesses thrive in some of the world's toughest environments, providing vital lessons for businesses everywhere.
The bulk of the world’s growth in population and economic activity in the foreseeable future will be generated in the developing world. This is precisely where enterprising families dominate, operating very differently than their peers in more stable and affluent nations. These businesses not only survive but actually thrive in turbulent times, enduring wars, lawlessness, market failures, environmental disasters, and more. The world’s most advanced economies will increasingly experience these types of structural shocks and chronic uncertainties in the years ahead. The question is, what can they do about it?
In The Enduring Enterprise, Devin DeCiantis and Ivan Lansberg bring readers into the lives of families operating in emerging and frontier economies who rely on a unique portfolio of stabilizing strategies to create islands of trust, resilience, and prosperity amidst persistent turmoil. Yet these tactics can also be deployed by any business coping with extended periods of volatility or building a more systematic approach to managing risk.
Drawing on real cases from around the world, and on their extensive research and consulting experience with family enterprises globally, The Enduring Enterprise will provide business leaders everywhere with new and useful adaptive strategies, proven to work in the toughest conditions, to help them face the world of greater uncertainty that lies ahead.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Leading companies... have much to learn about survival and success from family owned companies," according to this informative guide. Business consultants DeCiantis and Lansberg (Succeeding Generations) assert that family companies use "seven building blocks of stability" to persevere amid political and economic turmoil, including entering new markets when resources become scarce and "investing in backup resources and processes for all essential systems." Illustrating the seven tenets with real-world examples, DeCiantis and Lansberg suggest family businesses thrive by targeting "an underserved niche in conditions hostile to traditional competition," recounting how the AJE Group, a Peruvian soft drink company, was founded in the late 1980s by the Añaños family to fill the void created after rebels opposed to multinational corporations drove Coca-Cola and Pepsi from the country. Though the authors make the fascinating argument that family businesses flourish in turbulent markets because familial relationships provide the structure and stability that's lacking from society at large, several of the case studies indicate that cozy relationships with the state might be just as important (Japanese construction company Kongo Gumi prospered for around 1,500 years thanks to their "treasured relationships with the Imperial Court," for instance). Still, this provides an insightful dissection of the strengths of family businesses.
