ABSTRACT

In discussion with successful family owners that have overcome painful processes and conflcts, a question that occurs is ‘What makes these people tick?’ This chapter focuses on an elusive but central aspect of family capitalism: drive. One can safely conclude that a strong drive is involved in establishing and running a family firm. We easily assume we understand what we talk about with ‘drive’ or someone being ‘driven’. But what does it mean? With this as a starting point this chapter serves as a summary of the book. We point out how each chapter explicitly or implicitly explores drive. We try to answer that question by drawing attention to the connection between the complexity of drive, strategy practices and leadership.