Family business socio-emotional preferences are often Janus-faced. Some strive to create a strong business they can pass on to offspring by building innovation-promoting resources such as human, relational, and financial capital. Other family firms cater to family desires for unqualified nepotism, altruism towards undeserving kin, and appropriation of firm assets to fulfill parochial desires that erode these resources. This article explores how such preferences, together with their impact on resources and the innovation demands of their markets, shape the approach to innovation.

Company founders have to be optimistic and resilient. But new research shows that serial entrepreneurs-those who involve themselves in only one project at a time-tend to be so overoptimistic that they don't learn from failure. Some venture capitalists factor this in when making investment decisions, and they tend to have better results than those who don't. Other potential investors should perform this due diligence, interviewing candidates about the causes of their past successes and mistakes.