The SMU Business Family Institute (BFI), with a grant from Deloitte Southeast Asia, recently launched new research on succession issues within Asian business families. The long-term mind-set of family business helps to foster longer-term investment strategies, commented SMU Vice President, Business Development & External Relations, Associate Professor Annie Koh, who is also BFI's Academic Director. “If you don’t have patient capital to wait for ideas to take on a life of their own, there will be no innovation.” Such capital is easier to set aside in family businesses, she notes, which are often privately held, and so experience less pressure to meet shareholder demands or targets set on a quarterly reporting basis. It is for these reasons – their capacity to fund innovation and their emphasis on social capital – family businesses can lead change in sustainable development, she added. Moreover, their added incentive is that “They have to live up to the name of the family in every product or service that bears their name,” she said.