How Do Family Firms Launch New Businesses? A Developmental Perspective on Internal Corporate Venturing in Family Business

A theory of venture capital family business: a governance trajectory

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to understand venture capital family businesses (VCFBs) governance of portfolio companies through the deal process.

Design/methodology/approach

This study applies a theory-developing approach. A model of VCFB governance is developed whose key aspects are illuminated by four examples (cases) of VCFBs.

Findings

Recent research suggests that a venture capital firm's corporate deal processes can be divided into the pre-deal, deal and post-deal phases. Based on the age, size and succession dimensions, propositions for how a governance trajectory develops for VCFBs, affecting the deal process of target family firms (TFFs), are presented. These propositions highlight how the family owners' actions and behavior are related to VCFB governance, which in turn, influences the three phases involved in making an investment.

Originality/value

The propositions suggest how personal and administrative VCFBs' governance of the deal process of portfolio companies is significantly affected by centrifugal and centripetal forces that drive the respective types of governance where third-generation family owners appear as changers of governance approach.

Identifying territory-linked family business groups: a methodological proposal

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to design a methodology to identify territory-linked family business groups (TLFBGs) in order to overcome the methodological challenges and ease studies about family business groups' (FBGs) impact on territories.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper applied an algorithm to a data set of firms located in Gipuzkoa that were registered in the SABI database in 2018.

Findings

The paper defined a new construct, TLFBGs, and proposed a methodology that automatized the identification of TLFBGs by a seven-stage algorithm that was intended to be applicable to any firm-level economic and financial data set, including all registered firms and not only listed firms.

Practical implications

TLFBGs unveil the real relevance that family businesses have in the territorial development, encouraging the political support to family business. Additionally, the methodology provided allows understanding growth processes of family business.

Originality/value

The paper defines a new construct, TLFBGs, that highlights both the underexplored links existing between family and territory and between family and business groups, providing the process and criteria to capture it. The paper opens up large-scale empirical research on the social (and economic) influence of TLFBGs in territorial development.