The history of entrepreneurship research offers some insights into the future of family business research. These Insights suggest possible developmental processes for the family business research field and offer opportunities for family business researchers to build upon the foundations prepared by entrepreneurship researchers. History offers cautions as well to the future and value of family business research.

Many developing countries have been forced by growing budget deficits and mounting foreign debt burdens to find ways to reduce the size of the public sector or at least to arrest further growth. Thus the public sector can no longer be expected to provide employment for a large portion of new graduates as has traditionally been the case. Privatization of inefficient and over-staffed public enterprises is often one element of many countries’ efforts to reduce public spending, and in the process substantial retrenchment must occur. This adds to the unemployment problem, at least in the short and medium term. In their efforts to restructure and reduce the public sector, many governments are turning to the private sector to generate increasing employment and to provide many of the services previously provided by government. The private sector is recognized as the main engine of growth. The capacity of modern, large-scale industry to employ the growing number of labor force entrants is restricted, however, because of limited size and capital-intensive production methods. Thus, the private small enterprise sector is seen both as having the greatest potential for creating substantial employment at lower levels of investment and as providing a seedbed for enterpreneurial talent and a testing place for new industries. The U.S. and Europe are not the only places in the world where entrepreneurship is recognized as playing a major role in economic development. Even former communist countries are focusing a great amount of effort on fostering entrepreneurship. Following the government initiatives, universities are not only offering courses, but are also conducting a growing amount of both practical and theoretical research on entrepreneurship issues. As entrepreneurs and small business research conferences become even more “international” in attendance and issues, there will be fewer differences between different regions of the world from an academic perspective.