I've done it for you

Every day, when I deal with the events impacting family-owned businesses, the anxieties, emotions, plans, enthusiasms, conflicts, and errors that I feel inside me build up and spill over. These feelings characterized my first eighteen years of life and left an indelible imprinting.

The case studies that I have gathered in over thirty years of professional study and research, including the university setting, today permit me to investigate human, organizational and economic realities that are common to the majority of families engaged in entrepreneurial activities in Italy and in the world.

The complexity of psycho-social dynamics interwoven with the purely technical ones render this sort of professional activity all the more fascinating, new and productive. It is a profession that tends toward giving life; statistics show that two thirds of family businesses do not survive the second generation and only 9% survive the third.

Each time I accompany one of these businesses to any positive result and we plan future scenarios together, I feel that on that day in April in 1974 I was wrong; nothing is ever really ended.


Franco Cesaro is the owner of Cesaro&Associati. He specializes in uniting business and family values and dynamics. The main focus of his studies is the individual who works in organizations. In order to grow, these organizations must decide to invest in culture which is a prerequisite of autonomy, the development of talent and the solution of problems. At present he teaches at the University of Milan. He is the author of Non ne posso più dei venditori (2003), Piccoli e scatenati (2004) and Racconti di fabbrica, with M. Bini (2011).