From G1 to G4: How the Cockshott Family Built Innovair
Let’s Talk Family Enterprise Podcast Episode #81
Host: Steve Legler
Guest: Grant and Owen Cockshott
Host Steve Legler speaks with father-son duo Grant and Owen Cockshott, President/CEO and Product & Marketing Manager of Innovair, a third-generation, Winnipeg-based supplier of industrial gases and equipment, and the most recent winner of FEC’s Family Enterprise of the Year Award.
Grant and Owen open up about accepting the award on stage together, and what the experience of Symposium looked like from a first-timer’s perspective versus someone who attended peer advisory groups decades earlier. The conversation traces the business’s evolution across four generations, from Grant’s entrepreneurial grandfather to his engineer father to the sibling partnership that shaped Grant’s own leadership style, and now to Owen’s arrival with a marketing background and fresh instincts for social media and e-commerce.
They speak candidly about working with family enterprise advisors on both governance and structure, the value and limits of requiring outside work experience before joining the business, and how Owen built a standalone e-commerce venture from a Harvard case study, turning it into a genuine business within a business. The episode closes with father and son each offering advice to the next generation stepping into family enterprise.
This episode offers a grounded, multigenerational perspective for family businesses navigating succession, new ideas, and the balance between honoring legacy and continuing to reinvent.
Here is a link to David Bentall’s book Dear Younger Me: Wisdom for Family Enterprise Successors.
Episode link to Steve Legler interviewing David Bentall about his book Dear Younger Me: Wisdom for Family Enterprise Successors.
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