The Enduring Enterprise

Family businesses thrive in some of the world's toughest environments, providing vital lessons for businesses everywhere.

The bulk of the world's growth in population and economic activity in the foreseeable future will be generated in the developing world. This is precisely where enterprising families dominate, operating very differently than their peers in more stable and affluent nations. These businesses not only survive but actually thrive in turbulent times, enduring wars, lawlessness, market failures, environmental disasters, and more. The world's most advanced economies will increasingly experience these types of structural shocks and chronic uncertainties in the years ahead. The question is, what can they do about it?

In The Enduring Enterprise, Devin DeCiantis and Ivan Lansberg bring readers into the lives of families operating in emerging and frontier economies who rely on a unique portfolio of stabilizing strategies to create islands of trust, resilience, and prosperity amidst persistent turmoil. Yet these tactics can also be deployed by any business coping with extended periods of volatility or building a more systematic approach to managing risk.

Drawing on real cases from around the world, and on their extensive research and consulting experience with family enterprises globally, The Enduring Enterprise will provide business leaders everywhere with new and useful adaptive strategies, proven to work in the toughest conditions, to help them face the world of greater uncertainty that lies ahead.

"This is an insightful book that delves into the heart of this issue and documents the strategies and the mindset that leaders everywhere have to learn from family businesses accustomed to successfully navigating the uncertain and turbulent waters of frontier economies."
--Marc Puig, Chair and CEO, Puig Brands S.A

"Drawing insights from extremophiles and family enterprises thriving in hostile frontier economies, DeCiantis and Lansberg deftly distill seven stabilizing strategies to prosper in an untrusting world marked by increasing uncertainty and volatility. Business leaders and educators will find pragmatic resilience building ideas to fuel enduring success in this well-researched, beautifully crafted, fast-moving, and thought-provoking book."--Pramodita Sharma, Distinguished Professor & Schlesinger Grossman Chair in Family Business, University of Vermont, USA
"Here is a must-read book by some of the most seasoned students of enduring family businesses that unlocks some of the secrets of their success. It takes us deep into the challenges these companies navigate in dealing with the complexity of doing business in complex and turbulent emerging markets. The clearly outlined insights have relevance for family business leaders as well as others who have to lead their organization through these turbulent times."--Ranjay Gulati, Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class Of 1942 Professor Of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
"In an increasingly turbulent era, there is a lot we can learn from successful, multigenerational family businesses, particularly those that have been operating in frontier markets. Devin and Ivan provide a set of insightful and pragmatic perspectives, from understanding and advising many of these successful family businesses."
--Dominic Barton, Chairman of LeapFrog Investments and former Global Managing Director of McKinsey & Company
"In these pages, Devin DeCiantis and Ivan Lansberg offer novel and illuminating perspectives on the unprecedented trends that are changing our world. They also give us a set of practical ideas on how to navigate this new and turbulent environment. The Enduring Enterprise will become an obligatory reading for leaders in business, government, academia, and the media."--Moises Naim, bestselling author of Illicit and The End of Power, and Distinguished Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
"When dealing with the present or the future, businesses, family businesses and family offices all need a "tailor made suit" which they need to continuously adjust to rapidly changing conditions as time goes by. In this book you will find the fabric and the patterns needed to customize the right "suit". We have lived through many turbulent and uncertain conditions depicted in this book and have for generations relied on the strategies documented here."--Stanley Motta, CEO and Chair, Motta Internacional

Devin DeCiantis specializes in the financial, organizational, and strategic aspects of family enterprise. Raised in Toronto, Canada, he holds a Master's degree from the Kennedy School at Harvard with a focus in finance and economics, as well as a Bachelor of Business Administration from York University. He has worked with private and public sector leaders throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, and teaches about family enterprise at the Harvard Business School and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Ivan Lansberg grew up in an entrepreneurial family in Venezuela. He has consulted with complex family businesses in the USA, Canada, Asia, Europe and Latin America, and has made significant contributions to the understanding of family business governance and succession. He was one of the founders of the Family Firm Institute (FFI) and the first editor of its professional journal, the Family Business Review.

After receiving B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, Lansberg taught at the Columbia Graduate School of Business. He became a professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Organization and Management for seven years before going into consulting. His last book, Succeeding Generations and his previous book, Generation to Generation, were both published by Harvard Business School Press and have been widely praised as landmark works.

Lansberg is a frequent speaker at family business programs organized by universities and industry groups. He is on the faculty of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He and his wife live in Guilford, CT.

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