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Succeeding Against All OddsSucceeding Against All Odds

Lessons learned from 100-year family businesses

Dr. Dennis T. Jaffe

August 2, 2016

12 Min Read
Succeeding Against All Odds

Very few family businesses survive across generations to become 100-year family enterprises. I’m involved in an ongoing research project that’s gathering the collective wisdom of inter-generational families that have sustained shared family values and identity, along with partnership over successful business and financial ventures over three or more generations. (We refer to them as “generative families.”)1 

We asked family leaders to look back at their evolution and tell us what they’d done to succeed across generations. We’ve interviewed family leaders from 70 families2 who created strong, coherent, united and vital families over several generations, despite facing complex internal and external challenges. What enabled them to succeed a...

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About the Author

Dr. Dennis T. Jaffe

Dr. Dennis T. Jaffe, a San Francisco-based advisor to families about family business, governance, wealth and philanthropy, recently completed the working papers "Releasing the Potential of the Rising Generation, and Good Fortune: Building a Hundred Year Family Enterprise," published by Wise Counsel Research, based on his current research with global multi-generational family enterprises.

He is author or co-author of "Cross Cultures: How Global Families Negotiate Change Across Generations"; "Stewardship in your Family Enterprise: Developing Responsible Family Leadership Across Generations," and "Working With the Ones You Love," as well as management books "Rekindling Commitment", "Getting Your Organization to Change and Take this Work and Love It," and more than a hundred management and psychology articles. In 2005 he received the Beckhard Award for service to the field from the Family Firm Institute. He has a B.A. degree in Philosophy, M.A. in Management, and Ph.D. in sociology, all from Yale University, is a licensed psychologist, and is professor emeritus of organizational systems and psychology at Saybrook University in San Francisco.