Managing Innovation in the Entrepreneurial Family Galaxy: Toward a New Research Agenda

Abstract

ABSTRACT Academic Summary Innovation management is central to the long‐run competitiveness and renewal of entrepreneurial families, and prior research has documented how socioemotional wealth preservation, risk preferences, long‐term orientation, and idiosyncratic endowments shape their innovative behavior. We welcomed contributions that deepened our understanding of how family involvement shapes innovation inputs, processes, and outcomes; moved beyond R&D intensity and patenting; and extended the analysis to the diversity of actors, governance arrangements, and organizational forms through which entrepreneurial families innovate. The nine featured articles answer that call across multiple levels of analysis, from board and top management team composition, through succession and intra‐family relational dynamics, to firms' embeddedness in local knowledge ecosystems. These studies show that the predominant unit of analysis remains the single operating firm, systematically underestimating the transgenerational and multientity character of innovation in entrepreneurial families that today operate across a multitude of firms, family offices, foundations, holding companies, academies, and trust companies. To organize these contributions and chart the next wave of research, in this article we draw on and extend the entrepreneurial family galaxy perspective, combining its five dimensions (shape, mass, luminosity, distance from the center, and regeneration rate) with the input–process–outcome framework. Drawing on our examination, we have developed an agenda for future research on innovation in the entrepreneurial family galaxy. Managerial Summary Innovation management is decisive for the long‐run competitiveness and renewal of entrepreneurial families that own and govern their businesses. Family firms, the dominant organizational form worldwide, generate a substantial share of global GDP and employment, so how they innovate matters not only to the firms themselves but also to society at large. Existing research and practice have accumulated a rich understanding of how families' emotional attachment to the business, risk preferences, long‐term horizon, and unique resources drive or constrain innovation. Yet most current thinking still treats the family firm as an isolated entity, whereas today entrepreneurial families increasingly operate across a galaxy of organizations—operating companies, family offices, philanthropic and artistic foundations, holding companies, new ventures, and trust companies—through which innovation emerges, evolves, and accumulates over generations. This work extends current understanding across multiple levels: how boards and top management teams shape innovation intentions, how succession redesigns innovation trajectories, how families balance financial and socioemotional goals in their innovation choices, how tradition can serve as a springboard for international product innovation, how absorptive capacity turns emotional commitment into green innovation, and how local knowledge ecosystems support the transition to sustainability‐driven innovation. We introduce the entrepreneurial family galaxy as a practical lens for understanding innovation management in this ecosystem. For families and their advisors, the galaxy's five dimensions—shape, mass, luminosity, distance from the center, and regeneration rate—provide a tool for assessing and strengthening the innovation inputs, processes, and outcomes of the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem across generations.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 2026 · DOI ↗