IMD business school for management and leadership courses
Global Family Business Center
The Global Family Business Center is a leading family enterprise education, research, and outreach hub. For over 30 years, it has worked with the world’s leading family businesses. The Center’s mission is to inspire enterprising families, help them ensure family unity and business success, and positively impact society.
The Center benefits from three Chairs dedicated to the study and support of enterprising families – the Wild Group Chair for Family Business, the Peter Lorange Chair for Family Business, and the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy.
Flagship Open and Custom programs
In 2023, over 400 participants, from the first to ninth generation and from all five continents, joined our programs.
We ran our four flagship face-to-face open programs: Leading your Family Business, Navigating your Family Enterprise, and Leading your Family Office (in both Lausanne and Singapore).
These experiences continue to captivate and inspire many families, who often transition from an open program to a customized journey with the Center. We are also particularly pleased to welcome more NxGen members whose parents were in our classroom a generation (25 years) ago.
The Center also designed and delivered a dozen fully customized programs for business-owning families, family businesses, family offices, and foundations. Mandates included helping ultra-high-net-worth families develop their family offices and bring on board their NxGen family members, the continuation
of a multi-year program with an Asian family enterprise to train a world-class Board and ExCo team. The program also brings together two cohorts to build internal entrepreneurial and mentoring capacity and establish the next family business model.
“We’ve been back for a week, and there have already been significant changes in everyone who attended. It is exciting to see what more will be implemented because of this program. It’s the best thing that could have happened to our business.”
A record year for research and publications
The Center enjoyed a record year, publishing or contributing to more than 100 pieces of research content, including 11 FT50 articles. The team’s relevance and quality were recognized internationally.
FT50 articles
Academic and other practitioner articles
Books
Book chapters
Original cases
Conference papers
Media articles
I by IMD articles
2023 saw the publication of Family Office Navigator, a comprehensive and practical guide to help enterprising families design a modern family office that considers the complexity of their family, wealth, and enterprise in turbulent times.
The French edition of the Family Philanthropy Navigator was also released in 2023. First published in 2020, it is the first guide in French to inspire and accompany families in the adventure of philanthropy.
The year’s honors
More than 10 honors and awards were received in 2023, the most important being:
Strengthening connections
Experts from the Center delivered keynotes and presentations at both academic and practitioner conferences and webinars for a wide range of events and partners, including the Family Business Network (FBN) Global Summit, the Family Firm Institute (FFI) conference in New York, the Barcelona IMD alumni chapter, the Swiss Embassy in Vienna, the Singapore Institute
of Directors, and the Swiss Family Office Association (SFOA). Additionally, they hold numerous editorial roles and conference chair roles.
Recognizing excellence in family business
Thermax, an Indian multinational family-owned engineering conglomerate involved in clean air, energy, and water, took home the 2023 IMD Global Family Business Award.
“To us, performance is critical; however, values are sacrosanct, and my father always believed that profit is not only a set of figures but of values. We have truly incorporated this into the organization, and it’s part of our DNA today. Receiving this prestigious award validates our vision, our values, our culture, and everything that each one of us stands for.”
The Center was honored when the Grossman Family joined the Global Family Business Center Circle of Benefactors. Their generous contribution makes the Grossman family an inaugural member of this circle and a privileged partner in the next phase of the Center’s development.
Welcome to the team
Marleen Dieleman, IMD Professor of Family Business, joined the Center and will be based in Singapore. Marleen will run The Peter Lorange Chair in Family Business, also created in 2023. You can meet Marleen here
