INNOVATION AND INTERNALIZATION IN FAMILY FIRMS

The paper wants to understand and explain the wide world of family firms, fix the definition and the main characteristics of this type of company, helped by the explanation of strengths and weaknesses that define the borders of this main category of business. The central focus of the paper is to show the differences and similarities between SMEs and big family firms, in terms of strategy, management, and visions with a theoretical and analytical analysis with the idea to find evidence that comes from RIL - Rilevazione Imprese e Lavoro, an Italian survey run to the INAPP. We want to compare these two categories with the idea to find some differences in terms of business performance, i.e. profitability but also strength and continuity over time. In detail, we focus our attention on the business performance looking to the innovative capacity and the investments in this direction, to the internationalization capacity, and, in the end, to the financial strength that they have.