New Delhi, April 1 -- Dhirubhai Ambani built one of India's greatest business empires but died in 2002 without a clear succession plan. What followed is now business folklore. His elder son, Mukesh Ambani, turned his part of the inheritance into a global enterprise worth over $117 billion. The younger one, Anil Ambani, eventually declared bankruptcy before a UK court.

The difference was not intelligence or vision. It was structure. One instituted governance systems and raised leaders able to question decisions. The other's businesses struggled under debt and concentrated authority; and when markets turned, that absence of institutionally delegated authority became a crisis. Yet, this is a conversation many Indian family businesses still ...