Institute for Family Business fosters the survival, growth, and economic sustainability of family-owned and managed companies in Florida and the Americas through education, research, and outreach. Miami 's business community from the largest to the smallest firms are family owned and managed and many of FIU's students work for such firms when they graduate. The research endeavors of the Institute for Family Business is in conjunction with the Center's Entrepreneurial Research Institute.

The Institute offers regular outreach activities and lectures for local family-owned firms through the Center's Spectrum Lectures Series and special events hosted with Ford Motors and AOL Latino.

Starting in 2005, in partnerships with local professional service providers such as Holland & Knight and Rachlin & Cohen, the Institute created a Family Business Forum that is a series of breakfast meetings to address issues important to family-owned and managed firms in South Florida . The Forum is open to all family firms in the region and serves as a network of such companies that can learn from each other. To RSVP for our upcoming Forum, please visit our events page by clicking here.

In 2006 the Institute began to acknowledge the contribution of family firms to the economic vitality of South Florida by awarding the FIU Albert Haar Family Business Awards.

The Institute offers specialized programs to individual firms and groups that deal with issues such as financing privately-held companies, firm and family governance, succession planning, and crisis and conflict management. In 2007-2008 the Institute will offer a Directors' Training Program for those serving on boards of privately-held firms.

To promote university education on family business, the Institute produces the FIU Family Business Case Series . Funded initially by a grant from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the series fills an important void in the teaching materials on family-owned firms in general and Hispanic family firms in particular.