American University of Sharjah (AUS) signed an agreement with the STEP Project (Babson College, USA), making AUS the first university in the Middle East to be a part of an international consortium of universities studying successful entrepreneurial practices of family businesses over time.

The STEP (Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Practices) Project for Family Enterprising was founded in 2005 by Babson College in collaboration with six academic affiliates in Europe. The STEP Project is a global applied research initiative that explores the entrepreneurial process within business families and generates solutions that have immediate application for family business leaders.

According to Dr. Rodrigo Basco, Associate Professor and Sheikh Saoud bin Khalid bin Khalid Al-Qassimi Chair in Family Business at the AUS School of Business Administration, "Through this project we are able to connect AUS to an international platform where more than 35 leading institutions from Europe, Asia-Pacific, North America, Latin America and Africa are studying the phenomenon of family business. Our aim is to investigate what makes family business successful across generations in the Middle East."

By joining STEP, AUS will be a part of a leading network of global business schools, with opportunities for networking, collaborating, publishing, and developing courses and executing educational programs in the field of family business. "AUS' participation in the STEP Project is an extensive investment to create a family business knowledge hub and a monumental mark in the internationalization process of American University of Sharjah as a high-quality research and educational institution," added Dr. Basco.

"Family business and business families will face new challenges due to the economic and social changes that societies in the Middle East have been experiencing. The imminent shift in generations and leadership may preserve, nurture and alter the successful business models and heritage that have been created over the last 30 years or more. AUS is committed to contextualizing the research of family business in the Arab world, to educating a new generation of family business members to succeed in the transition process to lead their family businesses, and to linking our university and community by actively working with policy makers, practitioners and business families," said Dr. Basco.

The Sheikh Saoud Bin Khalid Bin Khalid Al Qassimi Chair in Family Business was established at AUS in 2016. Through the Chair, which is the first of its kind in the country, AUS aims to become a recognized family business knowledge hub in the national, regional and international context, focusing on three main areas: research, teaching and knowledge transfer.