John Davis
is considered one of the world’s top experts in family business management. He is partner, founder, and vice chairman of the Owner Managed Business Institute, and the faculty chair for Harvard Business School's executive education program, Families in Business: From Generation to Generation.
Trained in business management, psychology, and economics, he has taught for the Graduate School of Business at the University of Southern California and has lectured at IMD (Switzerland), INCAE (Costa Rica), and Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (Chile). He is a fellow of the Family Firm Institute and the Business Family Foundation. Professor Davis is a top-rated educational resource for the Young Presidents' Organization, speaking worldwide to its family company members.
Co-author of Generation to Generation: Life Cycles of the Family Business published by Harvard Business School Press, he has published on a wide range of topics pertinent to family companies. He is currently completing a book on the best practices of successful family companies and another with Henry Foley on the governance of family companies. His theories and observations have been cited by the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Economist, BusinessWeek, Family Business magazine, and many other publications.
Professor Davis earned his Doctorate in Business Administration from Harvard Business School in 1982 and his Masters in Economics from the University of Wisconsin.