You cannot let your successors off the hook, you can only prepare them.

At a nice entrepreneurs' meeting a few weeks ago, familyandtrends was arguing that entrepreneurs are not born but become and that the education of the early years in the family is a key part of the process by which one becomes an entrepreneur.

For some years now, the best academic theory has accepted and deepened the concept of intergenerational entrepreneurship, understood as that process through which entrepreneurial values and heuristics are transferred between generations. First, entrepreneurs are not born, there are no babies brought by the stork and newborn entrepreneurs brought by Elon Musk's Tesla; one is born with one's own set of talents and then evolves through education. Secondly, family upbringing in the first five to ten years of life defines a certain way of interacting with the world around us, e.g. with curiosity and proactivity, and certain qualities typical of the entrepreneur, e.g. a sense of responsibility and courage.

In the midst of this learned disquisition, a good entrepreneur who was attending the meeting bursts in saying: 'that's not true! My family has always left me free to follow my passions, after a few years I decided on my own to get involved in the family business'.

This good entrepreneur simply said out loud what many people believe. familyandtrends has already had the opportunity, in a previous article, to warn young people against following their passions (very bad advice indeed!); it is now time to warn the current generation against letting their heirs go free. The idea in itself of leaving descendants free to choose is appealing but illusory when not hypocritical; it breeds one of the deadly sins of family capitalism: not preparing successors.

That good entrepreneur, familyandtrends asked if he had ever, for example, spent a few Saturday mornings in the company. 'Lots of them, and in the summer before that a few weeks doing some work,' was the answer. This is the moment when the 'fascination' phase, with which the intergenerational transition of entrepreneurship begins (the next are "professionalisation" and "calling"). Daughters and sons watch what their parents do, they learn by emulation and in this you are not free, you are educated. In the words of Gonzalve Bich, third generation: "I have a beautiful photograph, I must be one and a half years old, sitting on my grandfather's lap as he shows me one of our iconic products, one of the ones we produce and sell all over the world even now. In the photograph, my face is beaming with joy'. It is in these moments that a child's destiny is tied to the family business; then in the phase of professionalisation, one can change path, choose something else, train as a man, but that bond remains. In this there is no freedom: and that is not a bad thing; the real risk is in the name of the freedom to self-determine and follow one's own passions not to take care of the education of one's successors.