The ways big data is impacting today’s business climate may be too numerous to count. The ability to access oceans of data relatively easily is a fairly new but massive phenomenon. And while many are excited about the capability, few are seriously examining how to leverage this data to exercise the core function of any business – sell a product or service in the marketplace. Few areas are as greatly impacted by this development as marketing and customer relationship management. But how does having so much data about customers improve marketing decisions for companies?

There are currently strides being made in answering these questions. Certainly, cloud-based solutions are available that can help businesses leverage data to lower their Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), for example.

Studying these emerging issues quite intensely is expert Michael Haenlein, Professor of Marketing at the business school ESCP Europe, Associate Dean of the ESCP Europe Executive PhD Program and the Scientific Director of the ESCP Europe Research Center on Big Data. Professor Haenlein’s research expertise lies in customer relationship management (CRM), social media and marketing research. Specifically, he analyses the relationship between social networks and customer profitability.

Leveraging Big Data to Reach Your Customers

Growing a family business into a profitable and successful enterprise is a challenging process and, once there, other questions present themselves. How does the family deal with its newfound wealth and affluence? How do you ensure children grow up without an unhealthy sense of entitlement? How do you adjust to this strange new world?

Dr James Grubman, wealth psychologist and family business consultant, helps families find practical answers to these questions. Aside from his academic training, he draws from a wealth of personal experience having first navigated this rocky terrain when helping his mother sort through their estate following his father’s passing. Later, he and his wife had to find ways of raising children responsibly in an affluent household.

Dr Grubman is the author of two books that explore this territory - Strangers in Paradise: How Families Adapt to Wealth Across Generations, and Cross Cultures: How Global Families Negotiate Change Across Generations, which he co-authored with Dennis Jaffe, PhD.

Recently Tharawat Family Business Podcast sat down with Dr Grubman to discuss the complexities of newfound wealth and the problems that arise when cultures and generations come into conflict.

Helping Families Manage Success

It would be a stretch to say the Freddura family invented calamari. However, as the proprietors of the Daily Catch, Boston’s pre-eminent seafood restaurant, they are at least partly responsible for solidifying its place as a staple appetiser in North American restaurants.

“My family helped get calamari in Webster’s dictionary,” explains Dominic Freddura. “Before it was squid, and we said, "This is the Italian word for squid."

Dominic’s father, Paul, was looking to make a splash in the restaurant industry when he opened the Daily Catch in 1973. Paul was born and raised in the North End and grew up eating his mother’s seafood-centric Sicilian cuisine, including fried calamari. At the time, the dish was popular in Europe and parts of Asia but was relatively unheard of in North America.

Paul learned about the seafood business from veteran fishermen at the docks and knew an opportunity when he saw one. Clams, easily the most popular catch, were exorbitantly priced, while squid was going for just 15 cents a pound. Paul decided to open the Daily Catch and place his mother’s calamari at the heart of the business.

The Daily Catch: A Family Recipe for Success

Interview with Matthew Hoffer Craig, Managing Partner, and Rebecca Bachmann, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer, Spire Strategy & Risk Advisory, Switzerland

The most successful business partnerships can take root just about anywhere. Some occur in the boardroom, while many others happen at the gym or on the golf course. But then there’s the case of Rebecca Bachmann and Matthew Hoffer Craig, who struck up a conversation on a bus heading to a tech conference and are now partners in Spire, a Swiss-based strategy and risk advisory firm.

They realised that with extensive and complementary skill sets, they could meet a demand that had yet not been addressed in the marketplace. Formed in November 2016, what makes them stand out from the rest is their self-described approach:

“Ingrained in our DNA is the belief that a great strategy requires unrivalled contextual intelligence. Spire’s approach is designed to obtain this intelligence through a holistic analysis of key quantitative and qualitative data points within and between three pillars: organisation, industry and environment.”

If past performance is any indication of future success, then the sky is the limit for the pair behind Spire. Together, Rebecca and Matthew’s collective work experience involves stints at Strategy&, the World Economic Forum, the US Department of State, General Dynamics and J.P. Morgan Investment Bank.

Tharawat Magazine recently sat down with Rebecca and Matthew to discuss the new enterprise and how 21st-century technology is affecting the global business landscape.

Spire: A 21st-Century Approach to Strategy and Risk Advisory

The challenges facing a family-owned business are wide-ranging; however, the Chair of Family Business sets out to become a thought leader by focusing on specific topics such as innovation, entrepreneurship, strategy, governance, and succession.

Through their research, Kammerlander and her team have come to discover that many conventionally held beliefs about family-owned businesses – such as that they lag in business innovation – are not true.

Tharawat Magazine sat down with Prof. Nadine Kammerlander to discuss her research and what the future holds for family-owned businesses.

German Family Businesses Eye A Digital Future

From the coastal town of Aabenraa in what is now Denmark, two young men, Heinrich Jessen and Jacob Jebsen, whose fathers and grandfathers were sea captains, set out on a trading expedition to the Far East in the late 1800’s. The two men who were also cousins proved very adept at bridging the cultures and establishing profitable trading partnerships, and in 1895, they went into business together. In 1909, they created Jebsen & Jessen Hamburg in Germany to facilitate trade between China and their European clients.

Today, there are two separate branches of the family enterprise, one that operates out of Singapore and the other out of Hong Kong. Together, the business has commercial interests in manufacturing, engineering, mining and distribution activities. Serving customers globally the group employs more than 7,000 people.

Tharawat Magazine had the opportunity to speak with 3rd generation member Heinrich Jessen, CEO of the Jebsen & Jessen Southeast Asia Group to discuss his family’s adventurous history and the key to longevity.

The Eastern Adventures of an Entrepreneurial Family

What are the ingredients of a strong company culture? In most cases, it is the result of hard work, consistency, and accountability; characteristics adopted by owners and employees alike. Family businesses are no exception. It might seem tempting to assume that family ownership would result in strong culture and a sense of purpose naturally, however, the reality is different.

Dov Baron is a best-selling author, with 30 years of experience he has been twice cited by Inc.com as one of the “Top 100 Leadership Speakers to Hire”. Over the years, his expertise has taken him around the globe where he has been the headline speaker for organisations, and global conferences focused on purpose-driven, authentic leadership and cultural strategies.

In this interview, Dov discusses the popular misconceptions surrounding company culture, the similarities and differences between culture in family-owned businesses and their non-family peers, and advice for those families who struggle to identify their driving purpose.

Purpose-Driven Leadership in the Family Business

Rodolfo De Benedetti was a mere 30 years old when he became the CEO of Compagnie Industriali Riunite (CIR) Group, a business established by his father, Italian business tycoon, Carlo De Benedetti who founded the company in the mid-1970’s. Today, the CIR Group is one of Italy’s most important consortiums with companies in the media, automotive, and healthcare sectors.

Not only did Rodolfo De Benedetti need to steer the company through difficult economic times but he had to do so while trying to establish his own way of doing things. Leadership can take many forms, and De Benedetti’s leadership skills were shaped and honed by the unique challenges that faced him. Not the least of these was ensuring the company thrives through the disruptions of technological disruptions.

Tharawat Magazine had the opportunity to sit down with Rodolfo De Benedetti to discuss leadership in the 21st century as well as the challenges and opportunities when faced with a great legacy.

Leadership through Resilience

Texas-based husband and wife owners of Saddleback Leather, Dave and Suzette Munson, built their leather goods business by prioritising the highest quality for their products, treating employees and colleagues like family, and dreaming of expanding their business so they can increase their global philanthropic efforts. Saddleback Leather is an unquestionable runaway success. The business that started by selling handcrafted leather bags on eBay now has a major production facility in Mexico and headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas.

The fact that philanthropy is woven into the DNA of everything Dave and Suzette do is a significant part of why Saddleback has such a loyal and devoted customer base. And their efforts to inspire other businesses to follow in their path are gaining traction.

In a conversation with Tharawat Magazine, Dave Munson discusses the early beginnings of Saddleback Leather and how he came to develop his unique corporate philosophy.

Saddleback Leather - Of Bags and Love

When husband and wife team Jorge Aranguri and Rosario Bazan started their Peruvian agri-business company Danper in 1994, they faced a challenge; when clients and business partners were introduced to Rosario Bazan as the company’s CEO, more than a few eyebrows were raised since female executives were not the norm at the time.

Despite the resistance faced, Jorge and Rosario continued to champion the causes of gender equality, health care and education for their workforce. 23 years later, Danper is a shining example of what determination can do with more than 8,500 workers and 10,000 hectares of cultivated fields by the north and south coast, as well as in the central and southern highlands of Peru.

Tharawat Magazine had the opportunity to sit down with Jorge Aranguri to discuss his company’s journey and the impact they’ve had not just on the local economy but also Peruvian society.

Growing Food, Equality, And Opportunity In Peru

It could be said that the most challenging part of being involved in a family business is not the business part of it but rather the family aspect. Communicating with and working in sync with co-workers can be difficult enough under normal circumstances. But when you factor in life-long parent-child issues, sibling rivalry, and just about every other dysfunctional family dynamic under the sun, it can be double the trouble.

Too often, family issues can spill over into the workplace where a lack of communication or longstanding resentments can begin to affect the bottom line. When this happens, many in family businesses can feel overwhelmed with frustration and unsure where they can turn for help.

Enter Ian Marsh.

Marsh is a London-based specialist in family dynamics and communication who authored the recently published book If it is so Good to Talk, Why is it so Hard. The book is the product of 40 years' experience in working with families as an adviser. The book explores the principles of interpersonal neurobiology and it impacts family dynamics.

When called upon, Marsh takes an active role to help family businesses in crisis by serving as a listener, communications and conflict coach, facilitator and mediator to families around the world, helping them to have the difficult conversations. Discussions which most often center around succession and governance. 

Recently Tharawat Magazine had the opportunity to sit down with Marsh to discuss how these communication breakdowns tend to occur, how our biological and psychological makeup renders us predisposed to them and how to effectively deal with our mind monkeys.

Overcoming Family Conflict In The Family Business

For any Family Business, risk and jeopardy can be found at just about every turn. Often, it can be found in the least likely places. It could very well be that the greatest risk to a family enterprise’s success is not found in evolving technology or direct competitors but rather from within the family itself. Dysfunctional and unhealthy family dynamics can sometimes be the X factor that stands in the way of long-term growth and success.

Nobody knows this better than expert and author Franco Lombardo whose latest book is called Safe Space™: Governance in Action. Lombardo is also the Managing Director and Coach at Veritage Family Office. Veritage is a Vancouver-based advisory firm which specialises in helping families to understand how their feelings about money impact their relationships with each other and the family wealth.

Veritage guides families in developing a governance model which holds the individual, the relationships with each other; and their wealth accountable to a set of guiding principles set out by the family for the family. 

Recently Tharawat Magazine had the opportunity to sit down with Franco and discuss how his personal story of overcoming trauma was transformed into a successful career of supporting family businesses around the world to feel safe.

Finding Your Safe Space

Being born into a family business can feel like one’s life path is already laid out. To some that feeling is a great burden of responsibility, to others, it feels like a cushioned set up and leads to a sense of entitlement. Vincent Valeri got to know both these feelings throughout his life and career. As the son of a successful Italian-Canadian tech entrepreneur in the 1980’s and 90’s, Vincent embraced everything about the “rich-kid” lifestyle. He had the sports car at 16, the most expensive clothes, and travelled all over the world. What he came to realise a few years later was how ill-prepared for life outside that bubble of entitlement he was. So when his father decided to sell the family business, Vincent was faced with redefining a life’s dream.

Interview with Vincent Valeri, founder of Vedaera

His path has led him to where he is today – helping family business members like him avoid the pitfalls he faced. As a Toronto-based family business consultant, he founded his company Vedaera, and helps families define success as more than just financial statements and works with next-gen family business members to find their identity beyond just that of future inheritor.

From Entitlement to Mindfulness – The Journey of Vincent Valeri

Running a family business, be it large or small, is an all-encompassing effort. There are no sick days, no sense of leaving it all at the office at 5:00 pm when you punch out for the day. Because of this, it is very easy for the role of CEO to become less of a job title and more of one’s sense of identity.

But who do you become when it’s time to hand over the reins to the next generation?

That very question is the driving force behind an Australian husband and wife team who consult with and guide large family business owners. Gianni and Danielle Fracchia are Founders of Fracchia & Co., a discreet family cohesion and early-stage succession consultancy firm. Their expertise is in working with affluent parents and couples, and large family business owners across two areas: (1) building a cohesive family unit and (2) early stage succession planning.

Danielle recently published a book titled, Putting Yourself Before Your Successor, and together, they launched the inaugural Global Large Family Business Succession & Transition Forum. Here, 48 outgoing CEO’s gathered to discuss issues, fears, and concerns that only their peers could understand and relate to.

Recently, Tharawat Magazine had the opportunity to sit down with Gianni to discuss the tricky prospect of family business succession and the future of Fracchia and Co.

We Need to Talk About Succession

Faizal Kottikollon and Shabana Faizal have been on an unusual entrepreneurial journey for the past twenty years. It all began rather conventionally with Faizal studying engineering in India and the US before returning home where he met Shabana in 1992. Three years later while on holiday in Dubai, the young couple decided to put down roots and call it home. In 1997, Faizal opened a foundry called Emirates Techno Casting (ETC) in Sharjah to manufacture valves for the oil and gas industry, a decision that was to change their lives forever. The cutting-edge technology processes he developed resulted in his business becoming one of the top three foundries in the world. In 2012, he sold ETC to Tyco International for over 400 USD million.

With the freedom and resources to do whatever they wanted, Faizal and Shabana passed on living a life of leisure and instead sought to better the world around them. They created a philanthropic foundation as well as KEF Holdings which has business interests in infrastructure, healthcare, education, metals and investments. Their goal is to provide poorer areas of the world with the education, training and healthcare they sorely lack through the use of technology and collaboration. KEF Holdings set up the first offsite construction park in the world that uses cutting edge manufacturing processes to partner with local governments and build hospitals and schools in half the time of conventional manufacturing methods.

Today the entrepreneurial husband-and-wife team are joined by their two eldest daughters Sophiya and Sarah transitioning them from founders into the second generation of their endeavours. The family has been recognised globally for their dedication to fighting inequality through education and for their strides in bringing disruptive technologies to traditional industries.

Recently Tharawat Magazine had the opportunity to sit down with Faizal and Shabana to discuss their rise to success and the entrepreneurial adventure they are still on.

KEF Holdings - The Adventure of Faizal Kottikollon and Shabana Faizal

The challenges of succession in a family owned business are as numerous as they are complex. From bridging the generation gap to walking the line between innovating and honouring tradition, succession is never simple even at the best of times.

What it is like for women in Africa to deal with all that in a culture where it is often frowned upon for women to show drive and ambition deserves separate consideration. All too often, business-minded women are put in the impossible situation of having to choose between a career or a family even if it’s a matter of choosing to join their own family’s business.

Dr. Leila Bouamatou is a next-generation family business member from Mauritania who has set out to study and better understand the challenges African women face when seeking to take over a business. Her recently published academic paper A Qualitative Investigation Of Female Family Business Succession In Francophone Africa was part of her DBA studies in Business Administration at Temple University in the United States.

Leila spoke to Tharawat Magazine about her research and the future for female successors in Africa.

Female Succession in Africa’s Family Businesses

The quest to discover the secret to happiness has been one which has preoccupied mankind since the dawn of recorded time. Aristotle and the ancient Greeks discussed happiness at length, and the American founding fathers included “the pursuit of happiness” as an inalienable right in the Constitution. Today, anyone has access to self-help books with various instructions for finding happiness, and yet, is mankind, in fact, happier than it was before?

One woman has made the topic of happiness and how it ties into family businesses the heart of her academic and consulting pursuits. Lucia Ceja, PhD is part of the Executive Coaching team and researcher at the Family-Owned Business Chair at the IESE Business School, she is also a happiness consultant for family-owned businesses at the Families in Business Analysis Center (FIBAC) in Barcelona, Spain.

Ceja’s current expertise involves Positive Leadership in family-owned businesses, the genesis and development of healthy psychological ownership, and the training of the next generation to become committed and happy owners in their family-owned businesses.

Tharawat Magazine met with Lucia to discuss the science of happiness.

The Science of Happiness in Family and Business

Family businesses are the backbone of Latin American economies. More than 85% of companies in Latin America are family-owned. They account for 60% of the region’s GDP and employ more than 70% of its workforce. Despite these statistics however, relatively little study has been done on family businesses in the region and much is yet unknown when it comes to their challenges and recipes for success.

Our guest on this episode is Prof. Claudio Müller who leads a team of academic researchers who are determined to change that. Claudio is a teaching professor at the School of Economics and Business at the University of Chile. He and his colleagues collaborated on the book, Family Firms in Latin America, which aims to provide an academic understanding of family business dynamics within the region’s context.

Professor Müller recently joined Ramia El Agamy on the Family Business Podcast to discuss their methodology and some of the more surprising findings that came out of their comprehensive research of Latin American Family Businesses.

Why Family Businesses are the Hidden Gems of Latin America

In this episode of the Family Business Podcast, Giuseppe Picchiotti discusses the inspiration behind Picchiotti's impeccably crafted jewellery, the importance of family and the fine balance between traditional aesthetics and modern technology.

Success by Design: an Interview with Giuseppe Picchiotti

Dr Klein discusses his book, Trapped in the Family Business and provides some techniques to make a positive change if you or someone you know feels stuck

The Family Business Podcast

The Family Business Podcast

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