1Céline Barrédy: How did you get involved in the STEP Project?

2Dr Rodrigo Basco: I was with Andrea Calabro at Witten University, the leading European Team (one of the first founders affiliated to STEP Project) and I decided to continue with the STEP Project. This project manages knowledge transfer to others really well. I was welcomed into the STEP team very early and contributed to enabling European institutions to join the project. I also coordinated research activities around that project. Then I became involved in the Step Global Board up to 2020.

3C. B.: What are the main research themes within the STEP Project?

4R. B.: The key point is entrepreneurship in business families. Family business is already a significant player, but we are trying to explore the business family. What are they doing? How do they organize themselves inside the family? In particular, as regards maintaining their competitiveness. We develop the entrepreneurship perspective from the family side. The resource perspective is particularly interesting. We work on the kinds of resources the family can bring to the entrepreneurship perspective, whether they are intangible or tangible. Concerning the former, we can highlight social capital, entrepreneurship culture, human capital, all of which can boost the entrepreneurial orientation of business families. These issues also need to shed light at first, on classical perspectives like corporate governance according to family size, to business size and the way resources can be organized. There is a need to integrate family specificities. Secondly, the structure and the strategy have to fit and of course the family has to align with those two elements.

5C. B.: What are the academic advantages of the STEP Project?

6R. B.: One main advantage is the opportunity to see across cultures. This is the key point. The STEP Project provides a context in which family businesses operate and this context differs across cultures. It takes into account the collective culture, which also has an influence on the particular type of family. This is different, of course, in the US as opposed to Europe. The STEP Project brings an international perspective to family businesses. Another main advantage is the collaborative research perspective. The Project continues to welcome new institutions, new researchers, new families in business. It fosters cross country collaborations, cross field collaborations because STEP regroups scholars from different fields like management, economics even therapists… It enables a more global understanding of the business family phenomenon. Scholars team up from all over the world and this leads to avoiding homogeneity as well as fostering cross fertilization among academics.

7C. B.: Do you think entrepreneurship and family business are synonymous?

8R. B.: They are not the same! Not all families are entrepreneurs. There are a number of issues that need further clarification. For example, what sorts of families are more prone to risk taking? How can we characterize their innovation practices? Can we qualify the way they discover and manage opportunities so as to enhance their abilities in this field? Another area concerns teamwork, and developing creativity. This is not so common among family businesses. These are key aspects to understanding entrepreneurship in the context of families in business. What are these families doing? How do they deal with conflicts, whether positive or negative? Entrepreneurship and business families are a team. Why is it that not all family businesses are entrepreneurs? That is a major issue.