Welcome to the moment I've been quietly building toward: the IFERA Annual Conference, June 9–12 in Naples, and the first time I'll be stepping into that room not just as a reader of family business research, but as someone who has contributed to it.

What is IFERA, and why does it matter?

If every article starts with a definition, let’s start exactly there: IFERA stands for the International Family Enterprise Research Academy. It was established a quarter of a century ago, in 2001, as a non-profit association bringing together an international network of academics, researchers, and family business stakeholders, all dedicated to advancing the science of family business. What makes it distinctive is not just the rigor it asks for, but the direction it points in: research that reaches beyond the ivory tower and into the boardrooms, family councils, and kitchen tables where real decisions about succession, identity, and legacy are made every day, where the pulse of family business life is beating and where the blood connections and the lack thereof shape the future of business landscapes.

And legacy is precisely the word. "The family firm is thus seen as a vessel which transports treasured assets safely and securely from the past, to the future." A vessel. Not just a machine to be optimised, not a legal structure to be managed – a vessel. There is transcendence to it, there is purpose, the time stays still when you see this magnificent piece of art passing by you. I have been treasuring this image ever since I encountered it and I am more than happy to marvel at it together with you.

This year's conference theme Legacy in Action: Mobilizing Family Capital for Enduring Impact captures the essence of what IFERA is, the entanglement of theory and praxis, the assurance that we are not only perfecting shiny theories but build further channels to direct the knowledge into the practical realm. Hence, IFERA calls for research that advances both theory and practice in family business studies (and there is a special reward for contributions with high practical relevance). Family businesses orient their strategic thinking beyond today (and this is one of a dozen of reasons to be fascinated by them), ensuring that upcoming generations flourish. In doing so, family-owned businesses take on the role of custodians of an enduring legacy, promoting financial stability, social welfare, and community bonds. That's not a niche academic concern as that vessel is sailing through every economy in the world. 

The family of family business research

There's something a lot of us face when starting diving into research: the literature has a community behind it. The abstraction of thought and the need to deconstruct them, the process of going back and forth between the levels of abstraction can make you forget something: The papers aren't just outputs, they're people. Scholars who have spent years, sometimes decades, trying to understand why family firms behave differently, what makes them resilient, where the tensions live, and what practitioners can actually do about it. Incredible human beings, who have made the field exciting and vivid by investing their lives into the field and becoming parts of this vessel themselves, not unlike rostras.

IFERA's annual conferences are built for exactly this: an intimate, inspirational, and interactive ambience for bringing together international family business friends, colleagues, and fellows. That word, intimate, is doing a lot of work here as family-owned businesses and such topics as succession, values, culture represent, indeed, something very intimate about family-owned businesses. This is a harbour and I am excited that Naples is one this year.

And then there's the paper. My own small contribution to this conversation: a piece on nepotism in family-owned businesses. Presenting it for the first time, to an audience of people who have thought about these questions far longer than I have, is endlessly exciting and is a perfect step to get more feedback before diving into the submission and publication process.

The sponge strategy

I'll be honest about what I'm going in there to do: absorb. The program features thematic and interactive special sessions with leading family business researchers and practitioners, and I plan to be present for as much of it as I can. Not just for my own research (though sharpening my angle matters enormously) but because everything I learn there has a second life: it comes back with me to the family businesses I work with, to the organizations and companies whose entire existence is devoted to supporting this particular and fascinating form of enterprise. 

That transfer, from science to practice, from conference room to client, is, for me, the whole point. Research that stays in journals is a tragedy – it is a ship that has never sailed. Knowledge that reaches the people who can actually use it is something else entirely.

Naples in June, a community of people who take family business seriously – and me being a part of it.

Four weeks to go. Naple is calling.