Innovations in family businesses: Contextual factors, processes and performance effects

Regional Government of Lower Austria

The focus of this research project that is carried through in cooperation with the Department Business of the University of Applied Sciences Krems are the questions of how family businesses make use of their innovation capacity and why some family businesses are better innovators than others. Building on the approach of "learning from the best", we aim to analyze five Lower Austrian family businesses that can be considered as best practice examples in terms of their innovativeness. More specifically, we focus on older family businesses that have preserved or recovered their innovative capacity and act exceptionally innovatively. Each case is analyzed individually and finally contrasted with the remaining cases. This enables the development of ¿innovative role models¿ for family businesses practitioners.