Family businesses can leverage unique advantages to create relational capital that is difficult for competitors to imitate.
This article published in Harvard Business Review explores how trust, long-term commitment, and multigenerational relationships that naturally arise between family-run businesses - what researchers call 'familiness' - is frequently underestimated or treated as a weakness to overcome. In fact, if family businesses intentionally leverage their identity to build deeper relationships with other family-owned partners, they unlock a powerful strategic advantage.
"Family businesses often underestimate the strategic power of their familial identity, defaulting instead to corporate models that erode the trust and long-term relationships that set them apart. A Family-to-Family (F2F) strategy reframes customers and suppliers as multigenerational partners, strengthening loyalty, speeding decision-making, and fuelling innovation in ways competitors struggle to replicate."
Read the full article here:
Notes
This article was published in Harvard Business Review, 7 January 2026.
Authors
Professor Vasilis Theoharakis - Professor of Strategic Marketing at Cranfield School of Management
Armodios Yannidis - CEO, Vitex
Josh Baron - Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School
Moe Khant -Thu - Doctoral Researcher, Cranfield University
