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HTDC to Host Workshop for Big Island Family-Owned Businesses

Honolulu, HI – July 17, 2005 – Running a family business can be a rewarding and stressful undertaking. There are many challenges when balancing the delicate relationship of running a successful business and maintaining a healthy family core. The “family” part of a family business, with its inherent dynamics, is a critically influencing part of the business itself, especially as it relates to retirement and succession planning.

The High Technology Development Corporation’s (HTDC) Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) program will conduct a family-business seminar, on August 2, 2005 at the Hawaii Innovation Center at Hilo from 9 a.m. to noon.

The seminar will feature guest-speaker Dr. George Vozikis, Bovaird Endowed Chairholder and Director of the Family-Owned Business Institute at the University of Tulsa. As a highly-respected consultant and guest lecturer, Dr. Vozikis has helped hundreds of family- owned businesses succeed and is very familiar with the unique problems family businesses encounter. He has taught a business entrepreneurship course at the University of Hawaii and h is lectures focus on how to overcome unique circumstances that occur when family members work together.

“Some of the largest and most prominent public and privately held firms in the country are ‘family’ businesses, including Ford, Marriott, Levi Strauss, Anheuser-Busch, and Coors”, said Dr. Philip Bossert, CEO and Executive Director of HTDC. “Several of these firms have passed ownership to several succeeding generations, extending back 100 years and more. Unfortunately it seems only three out of ten family firms make it through the second generation, and only one in ten through the third. This is why the average lifespan of an entrepreneurial firm is only twenty-four years, the usual length of time the founding entrepreneur was associated with the firm.”

The Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program (MEP) was created in 1988 as part of the Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology to help small and midsize companies succeed. MEP provides professional consulting services in the areas of improved business processes, increased efficiency and productivity, and eCommerce. Since its inception, MEP has assisted more than 149,000 companies through a network of 400 locations, including Hawaii. The Hawaii MEP program is administered by HTDC.

Registration will begin at 8:30 a.m. The cost is $20 which includes course materials and light refreshments.For more information or to register, call Nina Ann Tanabe at 933-8611, or email ninat@htdc.org.

HTDC was established by the Hawaii State Legislature in 1983 to facilitate the development and growth of Hawaii’s commercial high technology industry and to increase revenue generation and job creation within the technology-based sector of Hawaii’s economy. HTDC provides business incubation services statewide, operates and manages three incubation facilities , provides technical assistance for small businesses participating in federal research and development funding programs, and administers the federally funded Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies and the Manufacturing Extension Partnership. For more information on HTDC, visit its website at www.htdc.org.

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