Future Family Enterprise: Sustaining Multigenerational Success
Future Family Enterprise: Sustaining Multigenerational Success
| Course Dates | Format | Location | Duration | Time Commitment | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 16-21, 2025 | In Person | Cambridge, MA | 6 days | 8 hours/day | $13,900 |
| Oct 5-10, 2025 | In Person | Cambridge, MA | 6 days | 8 hours/day | $13,900 |
Tracks
Management and Leadership
Certificate Credits
5.0 EEUs
Topics
- Family Enterprise
- Organizations & Leadership
Course Highlights
- Week-long in-person course on the MIT Sloan campus
- Your family will learn practical concepts and tested practices, organized around examples of multigenerational success and failure, to aid your thinking, improve your long-term planning and alignment, and shape the roadmap of your family enterprise system
- In addition to interactive classroom work and exchanges among families from around the world, family teams will have daily, private, facilitated discussions with an experienced family enterprise advisor to focus on your interests and agenda
- Each family team will leave the program with a tailored action plan built together during the course
- You will earn a certificate of course completion from the MIT Sloan School of Management
Please note: Individual participants are welcome, but we encourage family enterprises to send teams of two or more. For maximum impact, teams of four more are highly recommended. Teams of two receive a 10% tuition discount per person; teams of three or more receive a 15% tuition discount per person. All teams (but not individual participants) will receive private coaching and a customized action plan for their family enterprise.
Course snapshot
Why attend Future Family Enterprise?
Learn the disruptive forces impacting family enterprises and families in the New Economy and the practical concepts and practices for sustaining success for generations to come.
Enterprising families who survive for generations know that long-term success requires change and agility. This has never been more true than in today’s turbulent era. Recent research indicates that enterprising families recognize they need to adapt in order to remain successful, while most feel unprepared to change in the ways required. That’s because today’s environment of constant, sometimes seismic, change has altered the game for family enterprises. In this new terrain, leaders and owners of family enterprises must learn the new formula for success.
The Future Family Enterprise program leads multigenerational family teams through a week-long conversation to understand the future, assess their readiness for it, strengthen their approaches and capabilities, and plan for their continued success through this turbulent age and beyond.
True to MIT’s philosophy of turning learning into action, family teams are guided through an action planning exercise to move beyond understanding into the implementation of important success factors, applied to their family enterprise. Join business families from around the world and bring your family to MIT to learn together, improve your long-term planning and alignment, and shape the roadmap of your family enterprise.
In this six-day program (Sunday afternoon to Friday at noon), faculty explore the opportunities, challenges, and future trends for owning, governing, and managing a family company and a broader family enterprise organization across multiple generations. Conversations and class sessions focus on the distinct issues faced by multigenerational families. The program views the family enterprise through the lens of ownership, helping you to understand the important decisions that are yours to make, as well as how to govern and plan for the longevity of your family’s enterprise activities.
Course experience
In addition to interactive classroom work and exchanges among families from around the world, family teams will have daily, private, facilitated discussions with an experienced family enterprise advisor to focus on your interests and agenda. Each family team will leave the program with a tailored action plan built together over the course.
Important questions addressed include:
- How is technology shaping industries and companies, and how must family-owned businesses adapt?
- What are the emerging strategies for capitalizing, owning, and controlling family companies?
- What are the trends in governance of multigenerational companies, offices, ownership groups, and foundations?
- How are families themselves modernizing and remaining united in this mobile, globalized world?
- With Generation X assuming leadership roles and the emergence of the Millennial Generation, how are succession planning and next generation talent development more complex today? How do families prepare for generational transitions in this fast-changing environment?
- What are the latest strategies for steering and sustaining a complex, multigenerational family enterprise, for another generation or more?
The combined experience of faculty and participants produces deep understandings and even profound transformations for participating families. Your family will have conversations you never anticipated and will leave the program feeling closer and more aligned about your future as a result.
The Future Family Enterprise program is led by MIT Sloan Senior Lecturer John Davis, a pioneer in the family enterprise field and a globally recognized authority on family enterprise, family wealth, and the family office. Davis joined MIT Sloan after leading the family enterprise area at Harvard Business School for more than 20 years. He is an award-winning teacher and researcher, and is the creator of some of the field’s most impactful conceptual frameworks. Davis is also Chairman of Cambridge Family Enterprise Group, a global advisory and research organization.
Learn more about the in-person course experience.
The MIT edge
Working at the intersection of management and technology, MIT Sloan is uniquely positioned to support family enterprises by:
- Helping shape the present by applying cutting edge ownership, governance, and management practices to the specific context of multigenerational family enterprises
- Helping seize the future of family enterprise that is being shaped by technological disruption, innovation, and societal changes
True to MIT’s Mens et Manus (mind and hand) learning philosophy, we use a variety of teaching methods to apply the learnings to real work in real time. Through interactive classroom modules, case discussions, exercises, group work, and facilitated private family coaching sessions, families are provided opportunities for transformative conversations, problem solving, roadmap building, and aligning on key goals.
Participation in this program provides a connection to a dynamic and vibrant MIT community. The MIT campus and surrounding Kendall Square is one of the densest startup and innovation clusters in the world, providing the opportunity to experience an unparalleled entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Applying to the course
Individual participants are welcome, but we encourage family enterprises to send teams of two or more. For maximum impact, teams of four or more are highly recommended. Teams of two receive a 10% tuition discount per person; teams of three or more receive a 15% tuition discount per person.
Qualified candidates are admitted on a rolling, space-available basis, and space is limited. Early application is encouraged and will increase your chances of being accepted. As this course is scheduled to be held in person, please also allow for Visa processing times.
You can begin the application process by using the red Enroll Now bar at the bottom of the screen.
Team Pricing
Team of 2: $25,020
Team of 3: $35,445
Team of 4: $47,260
Team of 5: $59,075
Team of 6: $70,890
Each additional participant will be $11,815.
Have questions?
Contact Us if you would like to speak with a program director or visit our Frequently Asked Questions page for answers to common questions about our courses.If you are considering Future Family Enterprise but have questions or would like to see if you would be a good fit for it, you may email the team at execedfam@mit.edu.
Health and Safety
See our on campus healthy and safety policies.
Upon successfully finishing this course, you will earn a certificate of completion from the MIT Sloan School of Management. This course may also count toward MIT Sloan Executive Certificate requirements.
Through interactive classroom sessions, case discussions, exercises, exchanges across families, private discussions within families, and action planning, you and your family will better understand the following and more:
- How family enterprises evolve over generations, and how they succeed in a disruptive environment
- How to remain united as a family and agile as an ownership group
- How to articulate your family’s mission and core values, and how to reinvent them for changing times and the new generation
- How to engage, prepare, and partner with the next generation
- How to manage generational transitions of leadership, ownership, governance, and wealth creation
- How to construct and grow your portfolio of businesses and investments, within and outside of your family business and family office
- How to adapt your organization, ownership, governance, talent, and culture to meet the challenges and opportunities of the future
- How to decide among an array of ownership and capital options for your family company and other investments
- How to design governance of the family, the ownership group, the family company, the foundation, and other organizations in the family enterprise
- How to have a social impact throughout your family enterprise and family
- How to keep your family and family enterprise on the path of long-term success
Sample Schedule—Subject to Change
Individual participants are welcome in the Future Family Enterprise program, but we highly encourage families to send teams of four or more for maximum impact. The program is open to families who own some combination of one or more operating company, family office, private investment company, family foundation, or other organizations or investments controlled by their family.
The program views the family enterprise through the lens of ownership, helping families understand the pivotal strategic decisions that are theirs to make as owners.
Who Should Attend
Family members in roles such as:
- Business leader or family office leader
- Employees and executives
- Owners and beneficiaries
- Board members
- Investment committee members
- Family council and owner council members
- Next generation members
- Lineal descendants and spouses
Non-family members are welcome if they attend with the family. They may be in roles such as:
- Senior non-family executives in the family business or family office
- Independent board members or investment committee members
- Trustees
The program is delivered in English.
| Course Dates | Format | Location | Duration | Time Commitment | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mar 16-21, 2025 | In Person | Cambridge, MA | 6 days | 8 hours/day | $13,900 |
| Oct 5-10, 2025 | In Person | Cambridge, MA | 6 days | 8 hours/day | $13,900 |
Tracks
Management and Leadership
Certificate Credits
5.0 EEUs
Topics
- Family Enterprise
- Organizations & Leadership