Managing Legacy, Achievement and Identity in Entrepreneurial Families

In discussions with entrepreneurial families about their futures, we often suggest that each family member should consider four aspects of their lives—achievement, happiness, significance and legacy—as a broad framework to explore their goals and values and to reflect on “who they are” and ultimately “who they want to be.” This framework comes from Just Enough, a book written by Laura Nash and Howard Stevenson that focuses on the meaning of success for highly accomplished individuals and families. In this chapter, just as in our conversations with the members of entrepreneurial families, we first describe and contextualize the framework. We then focus on two specific elements of the framework—legacy and achievement—because they tend to be a primary source of conflict and misunderstanding among the members of entrepreneurial families. Finally, building on insights from our own ethnographic research with entrepreneurial families, and from scholarship on identity, we reflect on what it might take to create an environment in which certain family members’ aspirations for legacy and others’ need for achievement coexist in unison. We believe that by fostering this alignment, the family’s entrepreneurial activities might have a greater chance at lasting success.