Chiara Succi, ESCP: ‘Family governance can be a response to today’s geopolitical landscape’

This often requires finding a balance with regard to the founders’ inherent tendency towards “custodianship”. “Protecting a company’s competitive advantage requires investment and discipline, but it must not result in rigidity,” observes Succi. As highlighted in the framework by Dacin, Dacin and Kent (2019, Academy of Management Annals), being custodians does not mean ‘passive preservation but constant renewal’. Otherwise, loyalty to tradition, if not balanced by the ability to reinvent, risks turning “from a strategic asset into a brake on innovation”.

Managing generational succession within a family business is therefore a crucial, albeit complex, process. ‘Transgenerational entrepreneurship is not passed on like an instruction manual,’ explains Succi, ‘but as a mindset that tends to weaken with each generational handover, unless it is actively nurtured.’ To prevent this from happening, the research by Canovi, Succi, Labaki and Calabrò (2022, Journal of the Knowledge Economy) – conducted using the Satta winery as a case study – identifies four levers that the entrepreneurial family can activate to stimulate their children’s willingness to join the business and facilitate the transfer of roles and knowledge. These include reducing the founder’s central role in decision-making, allowing space for the new generation’s need to explore, promoting their individuality in relation to the path charted by their predecessors, and ensuring direct experiential learning through on-the-job mentoring and early exposure to real-world decisions.

‘It is the combination of these conditions, rather than the transmission of codified knowledge, that makes the generational transition possible,’ says Succi, and this factor is a source of opportunity that goes beyond mere continuity. ‘A generation that is given genuine scope for individuality and exploration,’ the expert continues, ‘does not passively inherit a model, but challenges it from within, raising issues (such as sustainability, digital transformation and openness to international markets) that arise from its own position in the world, not from a concession by the previous generation’. Therefore, it is necessary to combine two different paces in order to transform succession from a moment of risk into an opportunity for strategic renewal: ‘on the one hand, the deep-rooted and patient wisdom that characterises family businesses, capable of taking a long-term view,’ summarises Succi, ‘and on the other, the speed of adaptation required by the contemporary context, where even tools such as artificial intelligence are accelerating timelines and processes’.

On the other hand, the ability to pass on tacit skills and knowledge across generations in an era characterised by rapid technological change and the immediate responses of AI and algorithms enables family businesses not only to manage uncertainty, but also to preserve a heritage of values that goes beyond its economic value. ‘The knowledge passed down – such as production techniques, relationships with long-standing suppliers, and aesthetic and quality standards – is by definition non-replicable: it cannot be bought, but is inherited and refined over time – says Succi – and this makes it not only a more solid competitive barrier than many technological or price advantages, but above all a cultural legacy, an implicit pact with those who will come after us’. This aspect also emerges from studies conducted by the expert (such as the research by Succi, Muratbekova, Bonneton and Tordiglione, 2026, *Academy of Management Perspectives*) on historic craft enterprises, which demonstrates how the custodianship of a company’s productive and symbolic heritage is, first and foremost, an act of responsibility towards the community, local areas and future generations, even before it is a source of value recognised by the market. ‘The value of this heritage, however, does not lie in its preservation per se – Succi emphasises – but in the ability to safeguard it consistently, remaining faithful to an identity and a system of relationships built up over time, whilst recognising that the contemporary market recognises and rewards authenticity, traceability and craftsmanship, particularly in the premium segments’. The challenge, therefore, lies in ‘protecting the uniqueness of the knowledge we hold by preventing it from becoming trivialised, and at the same time,’ the expert concludes, ‘preserving it as a living legacy, capable of speaking to the present rather than merely adapting to it’.