The 'business' gene What accounts for entrepreneurial talent in parents and some of their childrenchromosomes or care and feeding?Both?That question may never be resolved with certainty.But in kicking off fatherchild conversations in eight families, we learned a great deal about characteristics shared among generations.Business is more than a common interest between dads and their kids.It forms an intimate bond that engages ambition, achievement, competition, criticism, fear, failure, reconciliation, growth, renewal.In other words, it reenacts the high drama of family life. Like father, like child When your dad is worth $5.8 billion, it's not like you need to work for a living.But dylan lauren(Above), 36, daughter of fashion mogul Ralph Lauren(Right), devotes roundtheclock energy to her tenyearold retail sweets business, Dylan's Candy Bar. "My brain doesn't stop,"Says dylan, talking and typing into her blackberry while rushing from her 15, 000squarefoot flagship store across from
http://www.wirbel.co.uk/ralph-lauren-womens.html bloomingdale's on manhattan's upper east side to her sixthfloor office three blocks away. "I just walked past food emporium, and i'm like, my god, i have to do a better easter display, '"She says.Her father, ralph, 71, observes: "She's always buzzing, always excited about everything. "Printnewslettersharedigg it!Facebookredditthat flood of ideas has filled up 5 freestanding stores and 20 dylan's candy bar shops inside airports, hotels and big retailers like lord taylor.It's also driven a halfdozen new licensing deals in the last year, including a dylan'sbranded maclaren stroller and a dylan lauren barbie doll made by mattel.Next year the chain will open stores in los angeles and miami beach.Inside her sweets emporiums dylan has built a visual sugar rush:7, 000 kinds of brightly colored confections, from lollipop trees and chocolate fondue fountains to giant $40 gummy bears weighing almost 5 pounds and"Healthy"Candies, including dylan'sbranded 100calorie chocolate bars($1.50).There's other stuffplastic containers, jewelry, umbrellas, tote bags, pillows, tshirts, sweatpants, pajamasthat kicks in maybe 12% of company sales of $25 million or so. While hardly to be compared with an empire like polo ralph lauren, dylan's is an aspiring enterprise.She has a growing web business, and her stores host events and cater offsite candythemed parties.The manhattan flagship just got a liquor license and opened a redesigned upstairs space to serve candythemed cocktails as well as pizza, cupcakes and ice cream.There's talk of a children's book and a tv show. HEr casE raisEs thE quEstion:Can EntrEprEnEurial succEss bE passEd along from onEGeneration to thE nExt?Is thErE an"E"Gene?Are oprah and steve jobs(To take just two examples)Entirely
cheap ralph lauren selfmade?We'll take you through the nature/nurture debate, heated enough to scorch the ivory tower, in"Born or made? ".You'll also hear from a range of entrepreneurs and their impressive entrepreneurial dads. Ah, you may be thinking, how unfair to focus on such a privileged crowd, members of the lucky sperm club, swaddled in the soft folds of a financial safety net.You'd be rightand still miss
ralphlaurentshirts the point:You need success on both sides of the generational divide to compare traits of parents and kids.Lighten up.This isn't the american journal of human genetics. We didn't take cheek swabs of dylan and her dad.But you'd have to be comatose to miss striking similaritiesthe propensity for risktaking and novelty seeking, the need for autonomy, the drive to think big, the fixation on color and fashion, the obsessive focus on detail.Is it coincidence? Maybe it's part of growing up in the lauren household, where entrepreneurship is not so much a birthright as an inevitability. "I always felt i would do something [on my own],"Says dylan.At polo.Brother andrew, 41, runs a small film production company.Or long island's montauk turn into spirited skull sessions. "We all sit around the dinner table,"Dylan says. "We talk very supportively and also very criticallyin a good wayabout how to better what everyone is doing. " After graduating from duke with a degree in art history, dylan bounced around.She took acting classes, auditioned to be a veejay for mtv, got certified to teach aerobics, ran a special events business.Then she settled on something she'd never outgrown since childhood:Her love of candy and color. "As a child i liked just going into his office,"She recalls of her father. "The swatches were in candy jars.They were so beautifulthe reds and turquoise. "She considered opening an art gallery/cafe/nightclub with a candy theme, then a candy museum, finally a store of some kind.