What Type of Innovation for the Family Business? Preliminary Considerations on the Intersection of Business Family Identity and Innovation Practices.

In this paper, we investigate the relationship, until now under-examined, between business family identity (made of claims, values and beliefs as well as identity aspirations), innovation practices and the related innovation outputs. By means of exploratory case-study-based research design, we found that business family identity, which in our cases is one with organizational identity, is deeply intertwined with innovation practices. This intertwining is the key to explain the different innovation histories of the two firms under investigation as well as their different innovation outputs, specifically what we called “on-track” and “off-track” innovations. By “on-track” innovation, we mean a type of innovation that follows the path traced by the previous generations whereas by “off-track” innovation we mean the creation of new businesses. This paper provides both theoretical and practical implications.