The Evolution of 100-Year Family Enterprises

Families share how they have maintained and grown their wealth from generation to generation. 

While creating wealth is a wonderful achievement, business families are also concerned with how their wealth is used to support their values, the lives of their children and the well-being of the community. Over several generations, families who are successful in growing their wealth have been able to reinvent themselves and their business in the face of significant environmental transformations and internal differences cause by family dynamics. Borrowed from my Grandchildren is a fascinating look at how large, long-lasting business families succeed across generations. 

Author Dennis T. Jaffe, one of the leading architects of the field of family enterprise consulting, has interviewed members of successful, well known, 100-year family enterprises from 20 countries, who serve as role models for those wishing to see their wealth positively impact their children, employees, and communities. Half continue to own their legacy business and others have gone on to become family offices with a portfolio of shared assets, but all these families have sustained their values and identity as a family over more than three generations.  

Offering the collected wisdom of nearly 100 global business families, this insightful book shares the real-life stories of partners in business and wealth management over three of more generations. Families that generate rather than reduce their wealth across generations, known as Generative Families, focus on engaging across generations and develop collaborative governance for both family and business to ensure responsible stewardship from one generation to the next. 

This unique resource:

• Presents real-life stories of families sustaining wealth over generations


• Explores both the successes and failures of retaining family wealth


• Includes rare private insights from members of prominent wealthy families


• Examines the nature of global family enterprises and their evolution over generations


• Discusses the financial, human, and social dimensions of wealth

Borrowed from my Grandchildren: The Evolution of Stewardship in 100-Year Families is an essential read for family members, non-family executives, family offices, estate planning lawyers, family business consultants, trust officers, philanthropic and foundation advisors, financial advisors, financial planners, CPAs, and other finance professionals.