ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors examine the strategies that some family businesses have adopted that enable them to be truly ‘masters of entrepreneurship’. The focus of the chapter is on entrepreneurship in family businesses, including portfolio entrepreneurship and new venturing. The unique environment of families in business is said to provide ‘an idiosyncratic bundle of resources and capabilities (termed “familiness”) which provides a potential agency advantage in new venture creation’. Families in business who avoid taking on debt talk in terms of differences in their values and those of investors and the financial markets; underpinning such talk is a lack of trust, which arises because there is a different cognitive understanding of what is important. Within family entrepreneurial teams, sub-teams might be developed to exploit particular opportunities and to provide leadership opportunities for different family members. Having a portfolio of separate businesses diversifies risk for families in business.
