Global Family Business Center
The Global Family Business Center is a leading hub for family enterprise education, research, and outreach that has worked with the world’s leading family businesses for over three decades. IMD was the birthplace of family business education in 1988 and, today, the Center’s team continues to build on its legacy, supported by two Chairs dedicated to the study and support of enterprising families – the Wild Group Chair for Family Business and the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy.
Learning – open, custom, and flagship programs
We designed and delivered several open and custom programs for families, family businesses, family offices and family foundations in 2022. We also ran our three flagship face-to-face open programs on campus: Leading Your Family Business, Navigating Your Family Enterprise into the Future, and Leading Your Family Office. For the first time, our Leading the Family Office program was held at our IMD SEA Campus in Singapore.
On the custom program side, the team worked on several different mandates with family businesses around the world. These included a multi-year program with a midsized Asian family enterprise to train a world-class Board and ExCo team, as well as helping ultra-high-net-worth families develop their family offices and bring on board their NxGen family members. More than 250 participants, from first to ninth generation, and all five continents joined our programs in 2022.
“You have made a huge impact not just on a family business level but on our family as a whole. We have never acted or felt like family until now. Thank you for that, you guys are awesome.”
Leading the Family Business Program participant
Another record year for research, publications, and honors
The Center enjoyed another highly productive year, publishing or contributing to more than 80 pieces of research content, including six FT50 articles. The relevance and quality of the team’s output were recognized internationally.
6
FT50 articles
+20
academic articles
5
book chapters
5
original cases
21
conference papers
For a special edition of I by IMD in December 2022, the Center presented crucial insights into how families can face up to the challenges created by a world in flux
The Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy at IMD together with FBN International published a report “Navigating Your Family’s Philanthropic Future Across Generations.” In this report, we share insights collected from leading philanthropic families from around the globe. We examine their approach to family philanthropy, opportunities, and challenges, as well as the impact of their philanthropy on various levels, such as the cause, the family, business, and society at large.
More than 10 honors and awards were received in 2022, the most important being:
2022 Awards
Strengthening connections and recognizing excellence in family business
Experts from the Center delivered presentations and webinars for a wide range of events and partners, including the Family Business Network (FBN) Global Summit and NxGen Summit, the Family Firm Institute (FFI) conference, the Hong Kong and Singapore IMD alumni chapters as well as the Swiss Family Office Association (SFOA). In addition, Alfredo De Massis delivered over 20 keynotes at academic and practitioner conferences around the world.
We continue to strengthen the lifelong connections with our global IMD community of exceptional alumni. In December Professor Vogel ran Family Business workshops in collaboration with Sasin School of Management and FBN Asia in Bangkok, Thailand, and CII- Confederation of Indian Industry in Pune, India.
Carvajal, a leading diversified, family-owned Colombia-based company, was selected as the winner of the 2022 IMD Global Family Business Award).
“Being recognized by IMD encourages us to keep building a lasting family-owned company in the direction that we have been following since its foundation. It also makes us very proud of our progress and conscious of the challenges we must face and overcome as a family in the upcoming years. As a family, we feel united by this award.” Carvajal CEO, Pedro Carvajal.
Velux Group, a Danish market-leading manufacturer of roof windows and skylights, won the 2021 IMD-Pictet Sustainability in Family Business Award
In memoriam
We were saddened by the passing of Mario Marconi, our Executive in Residence appointed in 2021, after a short illness.