Generational change and innovation are at the heart of the future success of a family
business. Therefore, it is clear that the generational change of family firms should
be considered from an innovation perspective. Despite this, there is no research in
the literature that examines the importance of innovation in succession. In this article,
the role of innovation in the succession process is examined by surveying 76 Hungarian
family business owners and their potential successors. The aim of the article is to
explore whether innovation plays a role in the life of the business and, if so, whether
it can make succession more successful. In addition, whether the willingness of the
successor to innovate is more important than the choice of successor within the family,
and whether potential successors have innovative ambitions. Results include that family
business owners who consider innovation important can be considered as partially conscious
generational succession planners, as they are more likely to already have a potential
successor than owners who do not consider innovation important. Overall, the family
business owners surveyed do not consider it more important that the successor be a
family member or that the successor have an innovative approach, but first and second
generation owners have different views. Second-generation family business owners now
place much less importance on having a successor from the family than founders, and
all second-generation completers placed the highest value on the successor's willingness
to innovate, while founders placed significantly lower value on this. Nevertheless,
none of the owners surveyed had a potential successor outside the family. Finally,
innovation plays an important role in the future goals of successors. They consider
continuous improvement and innovation to be the most important goal after stable and
profitable operation of the company and the realisation of their own career, and prefer
to implement business process innovations rather than product innovations.
