UROP Project

Building Florida: Entrepreneurship, Family Business, and Economic Opportunity

family business, entrepreneurship, economic development, public policy, business networks and ecosystems

Research Mentor: Dr. Eric Liguori,
Department, College, Affiliation: Entrepreneurship, Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship
Contact Email: eliguori@fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor): Madisen Britz
Research Assistant Supervisor Email: mab22ba@fsu.edu
Faculty Collaborators: Dr. Juliana Binhote
Faculty Collaborators Email: Jbinhote@jmc.fsu.edu

Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 6
Relevant Majors: Open to all majors. Students interested in Business, Entrepreneurship, Economics, Political Science, Public Administration, International Affairs, Family Enterprise, Communications, and/or Sociology may find a particularly strong alignment.
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required:
Remote or In-person: Partially Remote
Approximate Weekly Hours: 6-8, Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link:

• Day: Tuesday, September 1
  Start Time: 12:30
  End Time: 1:30
  Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/j/8257454875
• Day: Thursday, September 3
  Start Time: 4:00
  End Time: 5:00
  Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/j/8257454875
• Day: Wednesday, September 2
  Start Time: 2:30
  End Time: 3:30
  Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/j/8257454875

Project Description

Family businesses, ranging from global giants like Aldi, Samsung, and Mars to the local sandwich shop down the street, are critical drivers of economies at every level. Yet despite their economic importance, our understanding of family businesses remains surprisingly underdeveloped. This is particularly true in Florida, where we know relatively little about the family businesses operating across the state, the challenges they face, or how policymakers and other organizations can better support their continued growth and success.

This research project, housed within the LEAD Lab (https://eliguori.com/lead-lab/) in the Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship, seeks to better understand the role of family businesses across Florida’s economy while simultaneously building stronger connections with Florida’s family business ecosystem. Our goal is to identify and engage family-owned businesses from across the state and learn directly from the entrepreneurs and families who own, operate, and lead them. In doing so, we will also engage policy makers, to learn what they are doing to support this unique population of entrepreneurs. Overall, we hope to generate new insights that can not only advance academic research but also help inform public policy and economic development efforts affecting family-owned businesses in Florida and beyond.
The research will center around a large series of interviews with family business owners and policy makers across Florida. Working as a team, UROP students will help identify family businesses, build a statewide network of potential participants, develop an interview protocol, and conduct interviews. These conversations will explore topics such as the opportunities and challenges associated with family ownership, succession and generational transitions, growth, innovation, family dynamics, and the resources family businesses need to remain successful over time. We will also seek to understand how the regulatory and policy environment affects these businesses and identify opportunities for policymakers to better support their creation, growth, and continuity across generations.

A second, albeit aspirational, component of the project will involve working toward hosting a Family Business Summit in Spring 2027. The goal of the summit will be to convene family business owners and leaders from across Florida for networking and professional development while also creating an additional opportunity for the research team to engage with and learn from this unique population of entrepreneurs.
We anticipate that the resulting dataset will provide a unique perspective on family enterprise in Florida and create opportunities for conference presentations, peer-reviewed publications, practitioner-oriented reports, and policy-focused outputs. Just as importantly, the project is intended to have real-world impact by strengthening connections among Florida’s family businesses and providing evidence that can help entrepreneurs and policymakers alike make better-informed decisions.

Research Tasks: We will kick off the project with a one-day research retreat designed to immerse ourselves in the family business literature, establish our research priorities, and develop a strategic plan for moving the project forward. From there, we will collectively develop our interview protocol while building a database of prospective family business participants from across Florida. Once the interview protocol is finalized, students will begin outreach to family business owners and leaders and move into active data collection. UROP students will receive training in qualitative research and interviewing before conducting interviews themselves. Finally, students will help organize, analyze, and interpret the resulting data to identify common themes, challenges, opportunities, policy implications, and support needs. The ultimate deliverables from the project are expected to include conference presentations, academic publications, and policy recommendations, as well as the development of an ongoing network connecting family businesses across Florida.

Skills that research assistant(s) may need: Required Skills: strong written and verbal communication skills; professionalism and comfort communicating with business owners and other external stakeholders; high attention to detail; reliability and willingness to work collaboratively as part of a research team

Recommended Skills: interest in entrepreneurship, family business, economic development, and/or public policy; critical thinking; collecting and analyzing qualitative data; community engagement