Ian Wilding is the CEO of Hangar 75, a Global Venture Accelerator committed to sustainable impact.
In the dynamic theater of investment, family offices are recognized as effective architects crafting strategies that extend beyond traditional asset allocation. A family office strategy typically involves a holistic management approach, integrating family governance, operations and wealth management to preserve and grow generational wealth.
However, there are limitations to this model that I believe family office firms can and should address. With that in mind, I would like to discuss a new strategy that infuses this model with the principles of synergy and cross-pollination to help ensure that investments are not isolated ventures but rather interconnected components of a broader, thriving ecosystem.
Introducing Synergistic Wealth
Leveraging our experiences across sectors such as education, community, homes and workplace, my team and I have developed synergistic wealth, a new paradigm for family offices. Distinct from traditional strategies, which often operate in silos, synergistic wealth is about creating a tapestry of investments that support and enhance one another. This method prioritizes agile due diligence, innovative thinking and real-world validations, fine-tuning capital allocation to resonate with practical viability and sustainable success.
This strategy can be viewed as an evolution of the family offices paradigm, as it focuses on shifting from a traditional, transactional investment model to a more holistic, interconnected framework. This evolution signifies a move toward recognizing the full spectrum of value-creation opportunities, emphasizing practical innovation and sustainable growth within family office investment models.
Revamping Strategy With Synergistic Focus
Synergistic wealth allows family offices to revolutionize their investment strategies by emphasizing several areas:
Innovative Deal Sourcing
Deal sourcing is the crucible of investment success. The synergistic wealth strategy encourages family offices to adopt a proactive lens, seeking out potential synergies and cross-pollination opportunities. With this approach, you can look beyond the standalone merits, focusing on how investments can integrate and thrive within a larger ecosystem and unearthing how your family office can contribute to and benefit from existing assets.
Agile Due Diligence
The due diligence process is undergoing a transformative redefinition. The synergistic wealth approach, unlike traditional static models, emphasizes rapid, practical validation of investments. This hands-on due diligence assesses and validates tangible potential, ensuring investments are precisely aligned with strategic goals for long-term sustainability.
Rigorous Experimental Validation
Experimental validation—testing investment theories in real-world scenarios to validate their practical applicability and synergy—is also crucial to this strategy. It provides family offices with a solid foundation for informed decisions in order to align investment strategies with practical success and sustainable innovation, thus ensuring their applicability and impact.
Implementing New Family Office Investment Strategies
To implement the synergistic wealth approach effectively within your family office, consider taking the following steps:
1. Adopt a holistic framework. Transition toward a holistic investment approach that views assets as interconnected rather than isolated.
2. Evaluate strategic synergy. Regularly assess potential investments for their synergy with your existing portfolio and broader strategic goals.
3. Involve your team. By keeping your team involved in the due diligence process, you can foster a culture of innovation and collective insight.
4. Be agile. Cultivate agility in validating investments, encouraging a dynamic response within your organization to market changes and new information.
5. Learn continuously. Commit to ongoing education and adaptation, keeping abreast of emerging trends and integrating them into your investment strategy.
Conclusion
Family offices are poised to enter a transformative era in investment strategy. By embracing a new lens of holistic, interconnected investment practices, you can anticipate a future ripe with innovation, practical success and robust cross-vertical synergies.
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