Deploying your Unique Strength as a Family Business
Presented by: Edward Hart, Daniel Garrett Van der Vliet, Shauna Feth
As a family business, you have five distinct advantages. You could even call them your Super Powers!
Values | Patience | Governance | Entrepreneurship | Trust
Dann Van Der Vliet, Cornell University, Ed Hart, California State University Fullerton, and Shauna Feth, University of Alberta, will emphasize these advantages as they encourage Family Business members to leverage their “Super Powers” to meet today’s huge challenges. Family businesses have lots of experience drawing on their unique strengths, to pivot and find new areas of growth during previous crises. To name a few: Bush Beans during the Great Depression; the entire beer industry during Prohibition; and more recently, Purell Hand Sanitizer during the Anthrax scare of the early 2000’s.
This current pandemic, while sudden and far-reaching, will inevitably mean a different model of business for many families and industries. Not all will survive, but those that do will probably tap into strengths they didn’t know they had, finding pools of innovation and a newfound purpose moving forward.
Using small group discussion and current examples, with a sprinkle of family business trivia, Ed, Dann and Shauna will facilitate a conversation around identifying what is unique about your business and family, and how amplifying that strength might leverage opportunities heretofore overlooked.
Hosted by Alberta Business Family Institute and Canadian Western Bank
