Emirates News Agency – Sharjah Entrepreneurship Festival examines sustainability challenges of family businesses

SHARJAH, December 17 / WAM / A group of female entrepreneurs and businessmen, among the most famous presidents and CEOs of leading family businesses in the UAE, reviewed the sustainability challenges facing family businesses, opportunities available for the new generations to develop the legacy companies, the importance of adding value to the business, pursuing innovation and continuous planning to achieve long-term lasting prosperity and maintaining the ties that unite the generations who run it.

This happened during a session entitled “Companies Through the Ages: Taking the Responsibility of Family Business” within the activities of the sixth session of the festival, which opened today with the slogan “Where We Belong”. Halima Al Owais, CEO of Sultan Al Owais Real Estate Company and Adel Al Zarooni, CEO of Al Zarouni Investments.

Ali Sajwani emphasized that the key to success in family businesses is the continuation of the pioneering spirit which ensures growth and renewal away from the bureaucracy of management with a balance between the preservation of the family legacy and the traditional style of business and the ability to embrace innovation and adopt new creative ideas to ensure a sustainable future for family businesses and improve their ability to adapt to changing market conditions and to discover gaps that can hinder the development of companies and limit their keeping up with the modern marketing methods.

Abeer Al-Shaali stressed the need to rely on innovative solutions to enable family businesses to adapt to rapid changes in order to ensure their sustainable growth and focus on building companies for the future and include in them the value that enhances the their presence and trust in them in the corporate sector and benefit from the aspiration that characterizes startups to develop family businesses within limits that preserve their assets and returns and avoid risk.

In turn, Halima Al Owais believed that the successful management of family businesses requires a lot of creativity, which increases the companies’ chances of sustainability and ensures the retention of their customers, regardless of how intense the competition is, taking into account the importance of training a new generation of the family to take responsibility for managing the company and create a contemporary vision in its work commensurate with developments in the business sector and its different challenges, ensuring the integrity and quality of services provided by the company to ensure the soundness of the family business and to allow sufficient time for preliminary research to study the market before undertaking any fundamental transformation in the business and family business projects.

For his part, Adel Al Zarouni spoke about the challenges of expanding family businesses with the passing of generations and the importance of pioneering new business areas to foster growth, but without adventures, and taking into account the fact that 9 out of 10 emerging companies are subject to bankruptcy in the first five years, which means focusing on what companies have. The family is one of the strengths that protect it from bankruptcy and ensure its sustainability, especially in light of the paternal role constituting an umbrella of protection for the family business.