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Family Business Center

Innovation in Family Business

Help established businesses innovate for the future.

How do family businesses embrace new ideas while preserving what makes them successful? This course explores how family-owned enterprises and professional service firms develop, fund, and sustain innovation.

Through case studies, hands-on exercises, and conversations with experienced business leaders, students examine how ownership, culture, and leadership shape a company’s ability to adapt and grow.

Put your learning into practice through a team consulting project with a real business, developing an innovation strategy and presenting your recommendations to a practitioner audience.

Additional Info

Course Highlights

  • Case studies exploring innovation, disruption, and business renewal.
  • Guest speakers sharing firsthand experience leading family businesses.
  • Hands-on exercises in customer discovery, teamwork, and organizational change.
  • Exploration of digital transformation, AI, innovation financing, and performance measurement.
  • A team consulting project that brings course concepts into a real business setting.

Why enroll

  • Learn how to evaluate new ideas and match them to a business’s goals, resources, and appetite for risk.
  • Understand how family ownership and legacy can support, or complicate, innovation.
  • Explore how established businesses respond to changing technologies and customer needs.
  • Build skills in collaboration, analysis, and presenting actionable recommendations.
  • Prepare to contribute to a family enterprise or advise family business clients.

Audit the Course (for family business professionals and shareholders)

How can your business pursue new opportunities while protecting what makes it successful? Join Loyola students and fellow professionals to explore innovation through the lens of family ownership, legacy, and long-term growth.

Through case discussions, practical exercises, and conversations with experienced business leaders, examine approaches to innovation financing, digital transformation, AI, and organizational change. Bring your own experience and gain fresh perspectives to take back to your business.

Professionals working in or with family businesses, along with family business shareholders, are invited to audit the course as non-degree-seeking students, without earning academic credit or a letter grade.

Interested in auditing?
Contact Jill McCall at jmccall1@luc.edu for application instructions, tuition information, and details about participation.

Upcoming Course Info

Term: Spring 2027
Dates: Thursdays
Time: 4:15–6:45 p.m.
Location: Schreiber Center, 16 E. Pearson Street, Room 405

Faculty:
Bryan Schwartz, JD

Format:
An on-campus, seminar-style course meeting once a week.

Credit Hours:
3 undergraduate credit hours

Prerequisite / Corequisite:
MGMT 201: Managing People and Organizations, which may be taken concurrently.

Questions?
Students and professionals are welcome to contact Jill McCall with questions about the course or auditing.