Can rising gen develop expertise in things their parents never did?

Yes, and often in domains the founder never engaged with. Kris Kluver, in The Dysfunctional Family Office, has Steve Mitchell announce at the year-anniversary meeting that he had taken a course at Wharton on advanced financial strategies for family offices. Sharpe ratios. Beta. Alpha. Equities versus private credit. He's now the family expert. He admits he didn't expect to develop the acumen. He didn't grow up wanting to do this. He found it through the family transition work. The pattern is common when the next generation gets real authority and explicit space to follow their own interests. The kid who didn't want the family business at twenty discovers, at thirty-five, an angle on family wealth management that didn't exist when the founder built the company. The next generation often becomes the family's deeper expertise on things the founder skipped, especially around philanthropy, foundation governance, and modern investment frameworks.