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Formatted like a comic-strip, this case showcases how Firmenich achieved resilience and strong sustainability commitments thanks to its family ownership. The case investigates how family ownership spanning across four generations and 125 years, has influenced the company’s core values and brought a long-term perspective to its strategy, which allowed sustainability, diversity, and inclusion on the executives’ agenda many decades before its peers. The case concludes by illustrating how these core foundational values allowed Firmenich to weather the COVID-19 storm by prompting the organization to react very rapidly, in a display of strong resilience. Firmenich is the winner of the 2019 IMD-Pictet Sustainability in Family Business Award.

The case explores how the family-owned VELUX Group – inventor and manufacturer of roof windows since 1941 – took incorporating sustainability in its business operations to heart, leading to its pledge to become lifetime carbon neutral by its centenary in 2041. In its early days and at the behest of its founder, the VELUX Group adopted its “Model Company Objective (MCO),” a charter for how the business should be run. The case illustrates how the MCO set the company on a course toward sustainable operations, allowing it to spearhead such efforts in an industry often reluctant to engage with the topic.

LONDON, 2015. The Rubin family’s history, for the last 80 years, had been deeply intertwined with that of Pentland Group. Berko Rubin founded the company in 1932, his son Stephen took over after Berko’s death, and his son, Andy, served as the CEO of Pentland Brands, the brand division within the group. Once the main element of the group’s portfolio, the brand management division faced many challenges in this ever-changing VUCA world. After turning 50, Andy raised the subject of his own succession in a meeting with the family shareholders. The history had taught the Rubin family that succession could be a great turning point, bringing rejuvenation to the business. Now, how could the Rubin family make the most of the next CEO succession? What competency profile should the next CEO possess? Could these competencies be found within the family? Would the board decide on a family CEO from among the members of the next generation? Or a non-family member? If they chose a non-family CEO, should it be an insider – a person who had a track record with Pentland and who understood the “familiness” of the firm and the values of the family owners, or an outsider who would bring a fresh perspective to the business?