Next Gen Family Firms

The future of a family firm isn’t inherited, it’s built.

This dynamic executive program is designed for the rising and current leaders of family-owned businesses who want to lead with clarity, purpose, and long-term vision. Across four immersive days, participants will explore what it means to lead across generations, design inclusive governance, navigate difficult conversations, and take ownership of their family’s legacy while shaping its future.

Through hands-on simulation games, real-world case discussions, and expert facilitation, the program helps participants become confident stewards of both family and firm.

Who is this program for:

• Next-generation leaders preparing to take on ownership, governance, or executive roles.

• Current leaders and family shareholders looking to prepare and empower the next generation.

• Multigenerational family teams aiming to align expectations, roles, and priorities for the future of the business.

• Non-family executives involved in succession processes, governance, or communication within the business family.

• Participation from individuals of the same generation is recommended, allowing them to learn and work together throughout the program.

What makes this program transformational:

• Define your leadership identity within a multigenerational family business.

• Understand and manage succession processes, including emotional, relational, and strategic dimensions.

• Design and evaluate family governance models that promote unity and sustainable business growth.

• Develop practical tools to manage complexity, conflict, and difficult conversations.

• Activate family capital and influence through impact investing, philanthropy, and responsible ownership practices.

• Build a personalized roadmap for the future, defining your next steps as a leader, owner, and steward of the family legacy.

An essential choice for those involved in family businesses who aim to strengthen leadership, succession, and legacy continuity capabilities.

Program Structure

At Católica-Lisbon SBE in Lisbon, Portugal

Day 1:

From Family Values to Business Value, with Liliana Dinis

The session will explore how deeply held family values can be transformed into strategic assets that drive business performance, brand identity, and stakeholder trust.

Topics covered:

•	From Family Values to Competitive Advantage: Understanding how family values influence strategy, decision-making, and long-term performance.
•	Authenticity as a Strategic Asset: Building trust with employees, customers, investors, and communities through values-driven leadership.
•	Balancing Tradition and Adaptation: Preserving the family’s identity while evolving to meet new market realities and generational expectations.
•	When Values Create Tensions: Exploring the paradoxes that arise when family values conflict with business priorities, growth, or professionalization.
•	Leading with Purpose as a NextGen Owner: Reflecting on how future owners can translate family values into strategic choices that create enduring value.

Responsible Business as a Strategy for a Sustainable Future, with Nuno Moreira da Cruz

The session will focus on understanding how integrating environmental, social, and governance (ESG) principles can future-proof your business and enhance its long-term value.

Two overarching principles will guide the module:

•	There is no such a thing as Sustainability strategies. Sustainability is THE strategy.
•	Without profit and economic sustainability there will hardly be any concerns with environmental and social issues. Correct! But what is becoming abundantly clear is that without dealing with those concerns, there will hardly be any profit or economic sustainability

Key topics:

•	The Context: “How did we get here”, Responsible Business and Purpose definitions, Shareholder Primacy vs Stakeholder Primacy
•	The Business Case for Action: Is there a Business Case for Action? Is the link sustainable strategy to bottom line established? /Stakeholders as the centre of the action/ESG as the driver for growth.
•	Case Study Unilever: discussion in role play model (Shareholders vs Employees vs Suppliers vs NGOS). How each of these stakeholders feel about the USLP.
•	The concept of Responsible Leadership.

Simulation Game: Reconnecting the Family

Participants enter a dynamic family business environment where relationships, expectations, and ambitions are not fully aligned. Through a series of strategic choices, they explore how trust, communication, and shared direction can influence the ability of a family to move forward together.

Day 2:

Rethinking Succession: Building a Legacy beyond Wealth, with Liliana Dinis

The session will move beyond the traditional focus on asset transfer to explore how to pass on purpose, values, and a meaningful legacy across generations.

Topics covered:

•	Redefining Succession: Moving from succession as an event to succession as a long-term developmental process.
•	Preparing the Next Generation to Own, Not Just to Manage: Developing the mindset, capabilities, and sense of responsibility required for responsible ownership.
•	Passing on Values, Identity, and Purpose: How families transmit culture, narratives, and stewardship across generations.
•	Balancing Continuity and Change: Helping each generation honour the past while shaping its own contribution to the family’s future.
•	Designing Your Personal Legacy: Reflecting on the kind of owner, leader, and family member participants aspire to become.

From Wealth to Purpose: Using Capital to Shape a Better Future, with Filipe Santos

The session explores how next-generation family owners can use wealth as a force for long-term value creation, balancing financial success with societal impact and building a legacy that extends beyond the family business.

Topics covered:

•	The Changing Role of Wealth in Family Business: From wealth preservation to long-term value creation across generations.
•	Deploying Capital for Impact: Exploring philanthropy, impact investing, venture philanthropy and other approaches to creating positive impact.
•	Building a Family Legacy Around Purpose: Aligning family values, governance and capital allocation to create an enduring legacy.
•	Designing Your Family’s Impact Strategy: Reflecting on how next-generation owners can use their influence and resources to drive meaningful change.

Simulation Game: Defining the Future

The focus shifts to continuity and renewal as participants face decisions that shape the future trajectory of the family enterprise. They are challenged to balance legacy and change while creating the conditions for long-term commitment, leadership continuity, and collective purpose.

At INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France

Day 3:

Steering the Family: Building Governance that Holds You Together, with Rose Xiaowei Luo

The session will focus on the design of family governance –family constitution and family council that balance agility and accountability, supporting business growth while preserving family cohesion.

Topics covered:

•	What are the key purposes and elements of a family constitution
•	How to balance agility and accountability through the family constitution
•	What should be the process of developing an effective family constitution
•	How to regulate some potentially controversial issues in a family constitution
•	What is the role of a family council and who should serve on this council

Professionalization of family business, with Rose Xiaowei Luo

The session will discuss the challenges of succession, and present a framework to professionalize the family business. We will show how professionalization of family business can address the challenges of succession and facilitate the next gen to lead the business.

Topics covered:

•	Why is professionalization an effective way to address the challenges of succession
•	Analyse cases where the next-gen fails due to lack of professioinalization in the family business
•	What does professionalisation actually mean and what does it involve - the entire family and the decision-making process
•	Develop a professionalization plan for your family business
•	Typical reasons for failure in professionalization

Simulation Game: Balancing Control and Growth

As new opportunities emerge, participants confront questions surrounding ownership, decision-making, and strategic development. They must evaluate alternative paths for growth while preserving what matters most, navigating the complex relationship between family influence and business ambition.

Day 4:

The Art of Difficult Conversations, with Antoine Duvauchelle

The session will introduce the framework of fair process to help participants navigate conflicts in communications and build participants’ confidence in highstakes, emotionally charged conversations with family members and business stakeholders.

Topics covered:

•	Fair process as a practical framework for building trust, legitimacy and commitment in difficult conversations.
•	How to prepare for emotionally charged conversations where family roles, ownership expectations and business responsibilities overlap.
•	Recognising hidden interests, unspoken fears and competing definitions of “fairness” in family enterprise dialogue.
•	Practising communication choices in a next-generation family business simulation involving succession, leadership and strategic change.
•	Translating difficult conversations into clearer decisions, stronger relationships and more constructive family-business governance.

Empowering the next-generation leaders, with Rose Xiaowei Luo

The next gen leaders need to establish their legitimacy and authority. We will address how the next-gen can become empowered through strategic transformation and present the approach to change that can help establish their legitimacy.

Topics covered:

•	Why do the parent and next generations hold different perspectives on whether the next gen are ready to lead
•	Analyse the key challenge for next-gen leaders: lack of legitimacy
•	How the next-generation leaders can use strategic transformation to establish their legitimacy to lead
•	How can the parent generation empower next-gen leaders
•	Develop a plan for strategic transformation in your family business

Simulation Game: Sustaining the Legacy

The final stage explores how families prepare for the future while managing the realities of working together across generations. Participants reflect on the consequences of their decisions and consider how leadership, relationships, and stewardship shape enduring family business success.