Articles: John Davis' Insights

Using a unique sample of 36 elite family firm directors having served on 615 boards with an aggregate 1447 years’ experience, learn how the multiple role identity struggles experienced by family directors are managed in the board. {…}

Having an owner’s mindset in today’s disruptive environment means excelling at making four types of owner-level decisions. All four are central to the long-term success of the family and its enterprise. To remain competitive in today’s environment—one defined by disruption, borderless competition, rapid economic transitions, and constant technological transformation—families need to reconsider the way they […]

The Covid-19 crisis is a time when you should gauge your family’s resilience—and build more of it. An enterprising family’s goal is to not just cope with adversity, but grow stronger as a result of it. Here are ways to achieve that. […]

John Davis discusses with Harvard Business Review the performance edge family businesses have over their non-family business counterparts. And how family firms tend to take a long-term view of investments and relationships, stay in ownership control to do things their way, focus on persistent improvement and innovation, develop loyal stakeholder relationships, build key talent in select individuals, carry lower debt, and build greater financial stability. […]

MIT Sloan Executive Education faculty member John Davis, a pioneer in the study of family companies and the director of MIT Sloan’s portfolio of Family Enterprise Programs, is bemused by the sudden interest of corporations in ‘long termism’. […]

MIT Sloan Executive Education faculty member John Davis, a pioneer in the study of family companies and the director of MIT Sloan’s portfolio of Family Enterprise Programs, is bemused by the sudden interest of corporations in ‘long termism’. […]

John Davis offers key guidelines for family businesses that are facing a shift between generations. While each generational transition presents distinctive challenges, these four management principles apply universally […]

Two-part series commemorating the 40th anniversary of the influential Three-Circle Model. FFI Fellows, Pramodita Sharma, and John Davis share their insightful conversation about the future of the model, research, and the field. […]

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the legendary Three-Circle Model, FFI Practitioner shares two editions about the model. For the first edition, Pramodita Sharma interviews Johns Davis, about the inception and impact of the model on the field. […]

A family business advisor sits with a founder and his two daughters in a conference room in Chicago, helping the family with an intense discussion they are having about the future of their family-owned brewery. The elder daughter works in the business. […]

Dual-class stock listings, often favored by founders and families who take their companies public, have a bad rap with a number of stock markets, stock analysts and especially with institutional investors. […]

The pictures of Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump participating in executive and ceremonial meetings with foreign leaders draw the ire of many. These images raise central questions about the legitimacy and utility of nepotism in the White House. […]

Perhaps the most challenging issue for China’s private businesses in the years ahead is how they deal with succession. Given the country’s brief 30 year experience with a market economy, China’s family businesses have yet to fully embrace succession. […]

Corporate governance can be difficult enough—but what happens when your board of directors is comprised of your cousins? Or when your CEO is your sister? Harvard Business School Professor John Davis discusses governance issues unique to the family-run business. […]

Campo Bom – O mineiro Alexandre Birman é um viciado em sapatos — os de salto agulha, de preferência. Enquanto executivos e empresários normais interrompem conversas para checar e-mails no telefone, Birman se distrai o tempo todo porque analisa os sapatos de cada mulher com quem cruza na rua, esbarra em eventos ou mesmo vê na televisão. […]

John A Davis, who has taught at Harvard for 20 years and owns a respected family business consultancy, is one of the best-known voices in the world of family business. We caught up with him and quizzed him about his latest thinking. What do you think are the biggest issues facing family businesses? […]

On important occasions, we gather for family portraits. If you were to take a picture of your family business today, what would it show? Family businesses represent the aspirations, achievements, and struggles of one or more generations of a family. We would see all those things in the portrait of the family business. […]

Optimism and pessimism are strong, stable traits that reflect our coping strategies. We live in an uncertain world. To cope with uncertainty, most people basically assume that things will either turn out well (the optimists) or turn out badly (the pessimists). So here’s a question to ponder: Is it better to have an optimist or a pessimist leading your family organization? […]

Negotiations between family members who own a business are different—different from negotiations between non-family members and also different from negotiations between family members who don’t have a business. This is because family relationships are distinctive kinds of relationships, and having a family business raises the stakes of—and often complicates—a family negotiation. […]

Having described the framework of family business governance and the governance of the business, John Davis discusses the most challenging of the family business governance topics—governance of the family itself. […]