Several empirical investigations indicate that family firms are more innovative under the founding generation’s leadership and become less innovative in later stages, while others state the opposite. Within this debate, limited attention has been devoted to understanding how intra-family succession might be an opportunity to maintain or improve family firms’ innovativeness. This paper aims to explore how family firms’ innovativeness may evolve from the first to the second generation and understand which conditions may favour or hamper this change. A qualitative approach based on a multiple case study was adopted, conducting seven face-to-face semi-structured interviews with founders and successors that formed the basis of four case studies. The results reveal four different dynamics that characterise how a first-generation family firm’s innovation capacities are or are not passed on to the second generation: decline, transformation, consolidation and preservation. Findings also show that these dynamics depend on the founders and successors’ approaches towards innovation. To better depict differences between them, we propose a typology of founders (lone innovator, collaborative innovator and orchestrator innovator) and successors (prodigal son, game changer, talent scout, faithful disciple) and explain how they influence the evolution of innovation from the founder generation to the next.

中文翻译：

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家族企业与从创始人到继任者的创新

几项实证研究表明，家族企业在创始一代的领导下更具创新性，而在后来阶段则变得缺乏创新性，而另一些则相反。在这场辩论中，人们对研究家族内部继承如何成为维持或提高家族企业创新能力的机会的关注很少。本文旨在探讨家族企业的创新能力如何从第一代发展到第二代，并了解哪些条件可能有利或阻碍这种变化。采用了基于多案例研究的定性方法，与创始人和继任者进行了七次面对面的半结构化访谈，构成了四个案例研究的基础。结果揭示了四种不同的动力，它们表征了第一代家族企业的创新能力如何传承或不传给第二代家族：衰落，转型，合并和保全。研究结果还表明，这些动力取决于创始人和继任者的创新方法。为了更好地描述他们之间的差异，我们提出了创始人（单独的创新者，协作创新者和协调者创新者）和继任者（败家子，游戏规则改变者，才华横溢的人，忠实的门徒）的类型，并解释了它们如何影响创始人的创新发展下一代。研究结果还表明，这些动力取决于创始人和继任者的创新方法。为了更好地描述它们之间的差异，我们提出了创始人（单独的创新者，协作创新者和协调者创新者）和继任者（败家子，游戏规则改变者，人才发掘者，忠实的门徒）的类型，并解释了它们如何影响创始人的创新发展下一代。研究结果还表明，这些动力取决于创始人和继任者的创新方法。为了更好地描述它们之间的差异，我们提出了创始人（单独的创新者，协作创新者和协调者创新者）和继任者（败家子，游戏规则改变者，人才发掘者，忠实的门徒）的类型，并解释了它们如何影响创始人的创新发展下一代。