Research integrity

Research and the advisory firewall.

A clear description of the LBS family business study, my project-management role, and the boundary between academic research and independent advisory work.

The study

I am Project Manager of a multi-school research study of Indian family-owned businesses, hosted at London Business School with co-investigators at Harvard and MIT. The study covers 3,000 family-owned businesses across manufacturing, textiles, automobile, finance, F&B, hospitality, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and allied industries. Respondents include promoters, business owners, and next-generation family members actively involved in management and decision-making.

The study examines governance, succession, strategy, resilience, and growth across economic cycles — the questions Indian family businesses must answer as they navigate generational transitions, globalisation, and regulatory change.

The team

Academic Principal Investigators

  • Sukrit Singh Puri — Assistant Professor, London Business School (MIT PhD)
  • Aroon Narayan — MIT PhD; incoming Assistant Professor, Bocconi University
  • Vishan Nigam — MIT PhD; incoming Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
  • Shivram Viswanathan — Harvard PhD

Project Manager

Jaideep Rao — London Business School

The firewall

A clear research-integrity firewall sits between the study and my independent advisory practice.

  • I do not advise families who are active research participants.
  • I do not pre-share preliminary findings, methodology, or sample data outside the academic team.
  • Decisions about study findings, framing, and publication remain entirely with the Principal Investigators.
  • My references to the study on this site and on LinkedIn are limited to my role and the publicly approved description of the work.

Two doors

If you are an Indian family business interested in participating in the study, the formal participation portal will open shortly. Until then, a short note via the Contact page is the cleanest first step — it will be passed to the academic team.

Contact

If you are an Indian family business interested in advisory work, and your firm is not in the active research sample, the right first step is a 30-minute call. The advisory practice is small, deliberately so, and structured around continuity rather than throughput.

Book a free call