Institute for Family Business

Mission

The Institute for Family Business (IFB) fosters the survival, growth, and economic sustainability of family-owned and managed companies in Florida and the Americas through education, professional development, applied research and networking.

What We Do

The IFB offers a portfolio of timely and relevant activities that aim to engage family enterprises in building, enhancing, and maintaining competitive advantage in a rapidly changing and challenging marketplace---locally, nationally, regionally and globally.

• Family Business Forum. The Family Business Forum provides family-owned business representatives a platform from which to obtain new information, network with peers, and gain further knowledge about an array of issues and topics that affect their family businesses. The FBF provides a supportive environment that enables discussion of issues of particular interest to family-run businesses, such family governance, succession planning, structuring and managing the family office, conflict resolution, and the impact of government policies and regulations (e.g., health care reform, taxation) on the family enterprise. A few select workshops do include corporate advisors as panelists, representing accounting, law, wealth management, real estate, insurance and banking. Membership in the FBF is limited to senior representatives of family-owned businesses. Meetings are off-the-record, and no media representatives are allowed. Annual membership is $1000 per individual.
• Family Firm Institute. In a developing and academic alliance with the Boston-based Family Firm Institute, the leading membership association worldwide for professionals serving family enterprises, the IFB provides multidisciplinary seminars to family business consultants via state-of-the-art online education.
• Academic Program. The IFB draws on the College of Business Administration’s entrepreneurship faculty—all of whom have private sector experience working with family businesses. These experts, as well as a select number of external faculty and consultants, are Fellows of the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center. Under the auspices of the IFB, they lead workshops, serve as panelists, author practical articles, and provide consulting services to family businesses and organizations that serve family business.
• Outreach. Mindful of our obligation to assist local family businesses to not only survive but thrive in a market where competition is increasingly intensive, the IFB and the Pino Center, in general, collaborate with local chambers of commerce and non-profit organizations, by providing practical training and useful knowledge that small enterprises can apply immediately. These include strategies for accessing capital, utilizing social networking to gain market share, and how to develop a winning business plan.

Future Initiatives

The IFB intends to launch several other initiatives that will further its mission and enrich its program portfolio. These include:

• Conference on Latin American Family Firms. This yearly conference will bring together family business owners from the Americas and family business experts to discuss current and anticipated issues facing family firms and the families themselves. An emphasis will be placed on case-based knowledge and best practices.
• Symposium for Women Business Owners and Co-owners of Family Businesses. This initiative aims to bring together women who own or jointly own a family business, either in the U.S. or abroad, to discuss critically important issues that surround their roles in leading, managing, or advising the family enterprise, as well as the challenges they face as women in their personal and family contexts. Sharing experiences, solutions to problems, and availing themselves of the opportunity to network with a diverse group of similarly accomplished women are key features of this program.
• Family Business Awards. The IBF will establish a nomination, evaluation and selection process to choose and showcase outstanding family-owned firms whose achievements merit recognition and emulation by other family enterprises. A luncheon will be held to honor the awardees who will be selected from firms based locally, nationally, and internationally.

For more information on the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center’s
Institute for Family Business, please contact (305)348-7156.