This is a very personal book. It has grown out of my years observing, advising and learning lessons from some of the world’s most successful family-owned businesses and business-owning families. Also, the book in a sense records my personal journey through a period of remarkable change, beginning in an era (the late 1970s) when family companies were largely seen as quaint anachronisms of bygone times, and misunderstood as inefficient drags on entrepreneurialism by dint of their under-investment and parochial management style. I feel privileged to have witnessed and to have participated in the transformation that has taken place in this viewpoint. Today, we appreciate the strengths of family enterprises and.
