10/03/2015

The Family Business Unit, together with members of the Gutsche Family, as well as academics from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, enjoyed a lovely evening together at the GFI Art Gallery on 5 March 2015.

The event took place to celebrate the partnership and sponsorship of the Family Business Unit by Gutsche Family Investments.

The event was hosted by Dorothea Moors, who is the board chairman of the gallery and a board member of GFI. Pieter Swart, Director of Marketing and Corporate Relations at the NMMU, MC'd the event.

The sponsorship provided by GFI will enable the Family Business Unit to become an affiliate of the Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Project (STEP).

The STEP project was established in 2005 and is a global applied research initiative that establishes learning partnerships between academics and business families in order to explore the entrepreneurial process among family businesses.

Currently, more than 45 academic institutions, as well as leading business families, from around the world have joined as partners to the STEP Project to identify and explore successful transgenerational entrepreneurship practices and to create a stream of powerful practices and cases that empower families to build their entrepreneurial legacies. Africa is currently still absent in this space.

Therefore, as the FBU, it was deemed imperative to become involved in the STEP research project as it provides a unique opportunity to become part of this prestigious global network. As an official STEP affiliate it will offer the FBU the opportunity to be involved with significant, global family business research and in this way put the Eastern Cape, South Africa and Africa on the global map in terms of family business research.

ABOVE (from left to right): Mrs Margarete Unite, Mrs Dorothea Moors, Prof Elmarie Venter and Mr Phil Gutsche