The Australian Centre for Family Business (ACFB) Director, Dr Justin Craig, has been asked to join the Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Project (STEP) leadership launch at the North America Inaugural Meeting on May 5 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.

STEP is an applied research project which brings together family business scholars from leading universities around the globe with leaders of entrepreneurial family enterprises. With 33 partner universities throughout Europe, Latin America and Asia Pacific, STEP is one of the largest global research projects in family business studies.

“North America is the final region in the STEP project rollout,” commented Dr Craig.

“This has been a deliberate strategy by the Board. We needed to demonstrate legitimacy and sustainability in other regions before recruiting North American partners into the project. The initial partner group includes some of the leading scholars and thinkers in family business.”

Universities introduced to the project at the launch will include Babson, McGill, Concordia, Vermont, Northwestern, Worcester Polytechnic, Utah State, and Dalhousie.

The ACFB at Bond University is a founding member of STEP and has to date published two research papers and four book chapters using the data collected as part of the STEP initiative.

In addition, Dr Wayne Irava’s dissertation (supervised by ACFB Director Professor Ken Moores), based on STEP family data, was awarded the prestigious Family Firm Institute best dissertation award in 2010.