Sustaining family-firm innovation through value and process principles

Purpose: Organization renewal through innovation represents a difficult managerial challenge in family firms. This paper aims to reveal a framework for sustaining innovation capabilities through a perspective of value and process principles. Design/methodology/approach: The author examined the findings from consulting projects in high performing family firms and literature from the areas of family firm strategy and leadership. Findings: The author describes how combining patterns of innovative organizations with patterns of high-performing family firms can help leaders to sustain innovation. This study indicates that a value- and process-driven perspective is important for effective innovation. In particular, the four value principles are continuity-, community-, connection- and command-related factors (4C’s). The four process principles, in turn, are profession-, project-, product- and purchase-related factors (4P’s). Originality/value: This paper is a part of a wider study of innovative German family firms initiated in 2012. The 4C’s and 4P’s framework suggests a practical means to better implement innovation by reconciling the firm’s innovation strategy, leadership behavior and organizational learning.