What Europe’s oldest companies can teach its newest startups

Europe loves founder stories. We celebrate the courage it takes to build something from nothing, challenge established industries and create entirely new markets. Rightly so. Europe needs more ambitious founders willing to build the companies of tomorrow.

Like many people in the investment and startup ecosystem, I have long associated entrepreneurship with the act of founding a company. But while interviewing Maximilian J. Riedel, President & CEO of the wine glassmaker RIEDEL, and a member of the family’s eleventh generation, I began to wonder whether that definition is too narrow.

What if entrepreneurship doesn’t end with the founder?

One observation has surfaced repeatedly in my conversations with founders, investors, executives and multi-generational family business leaders across Europe: the companies that endure for generations are not those that choose between tradition and innovation. They are the ones that continually balance both.

Each generation preserves the company’s core identity while reinventing how it creates value in a changing world.

Researchers describe this phenomenon as “transgenerational entrepreneurship“: the ability to create entrepreneurial value across generations. While well established within family business research, the concept has received far less attention within the startup ecosystem. It deserves a place in today’s startup conversation.

Entrepreneurship beyond the founder

Few companies illustrate this better than RIEDEL. Founded in 1756, the Austrian glassmaker has reinvented itself repeatedly over 270 years. After losing its Bohemian factories, property and assets following the Second World War, the family rebuilt the company in Austria. Later generations, however, did not simply preserve what had been created.

Claus J. Riedel revolutionised wine glass design through functional, wine-friendly stemware. Georg J. Riedel later expanded the business internationally and developed grape-varietal-specific glassware for machine production. Today, Maximilian J. Riedel continues to evolve both the business and the brand for a new generation of consumers.

Looking at RIEDEL’s history, it becomes difficult to argue that entrepreneurship belonged only to the founder. Every generation inherited the same company, but none inherited the same world.

Changing markets, new technologies and evolving consumer expectations demanded fresh thinking each time. What endured was not the original entrepreneurial act, but a repeated willingness to reinvent the company while remaining true to its purpose.

That may be one of the most useful lessons for today’s founders.

We often define entrepreneurship as the act of starting a company. But perhaps it is better understood as the ability to continually reinvent how a company creates value as the world changes. Founding a company may be only the first entrepreneurial act.

Today’s founders are building businesses in an era of extraordinary technological change. Few can confidently predict what their markets will look like even five years from now. History suggests that the companies most likely to endure are not necessarily those that predict every shift correctly, but those that develop the capacity to adapt when change arrives.

In that sense, startups and companies like RIEDEL face the same fundamental challenge. Neither can rely on yesterday’s success. Both must remain entrepreneurial long after their original business model has proven itself.

What startups can learn from Europe’s enduring companies

Europe spends considerable time discussing how to create more startups, more scale-ups and more globally competitive companies. Those conversations are essential. But perhaps we are overlooking another competitive advantage.

Across Europe are entrepreneurial families and long-established companies that have spent generations navigating disruption, adapting to technological change and reinventing successful businesses. Alongside capital, networks and industrial expertise, they possess something equally valuable: accumulated entrepreneurial experience.

This is not an argument for looking backwards. It is an argument for learning from organisations that have already demonstrated an extraordinary capacity to adapt.

Europe’s startup ecosystem brings speed, breakthrough technologies and new ways of thinking. Long-established entrepreneurial companies bring decades, sometimes centuries, of experience in reinvention. Those strengths are complementary, not competing.

For founders, the lesson is not to imitate century-old companies. It is to recognise that the capabilities required to build a company and the capabilities required to keep reinventing one are closely connected.

Perhaps we should therefore broaden the way we think about entrepreneurship. Not by celebrating founders any less, but by recognising that building a lasting company requires entrepreneurship long after the company has been founded.

Europe certainly needs more founders. But it also needs more companies capable of reinventing themselves generation after generation.

Perhaps Europe’s greatest competitive advantage will not simply be its ability to create new companies. It may also be its ability to build companies that remain entrepreneurial as the world continues to change.