Scaling a Family Business While Maintaining Founding Values

Cold Call

One of the oldest Black-owned security firms in the United States, Johnson Security Bureau, provided mainly unarmed guards to New York banks, public works, and hospitals. The company’s status as a woman-owned, minority-owned firm had been crucial to its competitive strategy since CEO Jessica Johnson-Cope took over the firm from her father.

In order to grow the family business, however, Johnson-Cope considered partnering with security firms in other states, something that threatened to put some of the company’s founding priorities on the back burner. She also considered expanding the business into cybersecurity.

In this conversation with host Brian Kenny, Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Henry McGee and CEO Jessica Johnson-Cope discuss the issues of scaling a minority-owned family business that are at the heart of the case “Johnson Security Bureau: Building Multigenerational Success.”