Thriving in a Changing World Course Content
Make an Impact with today’s most innovative strategies
Thriving in a Changing World implies being able to lead and support business families in their efforts to not only develop and commercialize ideas to create and capture economic value, but also to become impact-driven enterprises.
This certification course will cover key learnings and strategic approaches to help you identify, analyze and respond to the socioeconomic and environmental issues affecting your family enterprise or your family enterprise clients.
What will you learn?
Key learning objectives include enhancing your ability to:
- Analyze global trends systemically and translate them into enterprise strategy and operations.
- Foster impact entrepreneurship that creates social and economic value.
- Spot blind spots and structural barriers across business, family and ownership; design fair, trusted people systems that improve performance.
- Learn about sustainability pathways for legacy firms and new ventures.
- Rethink profit as “profit with purpose”: set aims, choose structures and put them into daily practice.
- Facilitate cross-generation discussions and co-create concrete next steps.
Learning outcomes for each course topic are outlined below.
Global Trends, Social Impact
Family businesses operate amid fast‑moving social, technology, environmental, economic and political forces. This module offers simple ways to read the landscape, understand stakeholder and next‑gen expectations, and turn big‑picture signals into near‑term decisions across business, family and ownership.
You will be able to:
- Scan and prioritize key trends and expectations using a clear, practical lens.
- Translate what you see into strategy, operations, capital allocation and decision‑making.
- Lead cross‑generation conversations that turn uncertainty into clear choices.
- Set early‑warning indicators and decision rules so you act at the right time.
Impact Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Families bring values, reputation and relationships that can power real solutions—while building durable enterprise value. Learn how to spot opportunity areas, choose the right path (build, partner, or invest) and run disciplined experiments that reduce risk and speed learning.
You will be able to:
- Identify opportunity spaces aligned with family strengths, assets and purpose.
- Compare venture paths and design fit‑for‑purpose governance and funding options.
- Run lean tests to validate problem–solution fit before you scale.
- Set a small set of impact and financial metrics with regular check‑ins for learning.
People & Culture: Inclusion, Belonging & Performance
Talent expectations and demographics are changing. Long‑standing habits can unintentionally limit opportunity across the business, the family, and the owners. This module helps you identify blind spots, see where practices create unequal access or outcomes, and make practical changes that build trust. We focus on working well across generations and tapping different ways of thinking (including neurodiversity) to improve decisions, teams and succession.
You will be able to:
- Recognize common blind spots that hold back inclusion and performance.
- Understand inclusion across business, family and ownership—and why it matters.
- Use a wider range of perspectives to raise decision quality and innovation.
- Try new approaches in two priority areas: cross‑generation collaboration and neurodiversity.
Sustainability & Continuity
Environmental change brings real risk—and long‑term opportunity. We treat sustainability as strategy. Compare ventures built for impact from day one with practical updates in established firms. Then choose credible pathways—efficiency, product redesign, supplier engagement and circularity—to embed environmental value in day‑to‑day operations.
You will be able to:
- Explain the business case for sustainability in long‑term family enterprise continuity.
- Identify the big environmental issues in your operations and supply chain.
- Choose practical steps and sequence a right‑sized roadmap for your enterprise.
- Set decision roles, capital commitments and metrics to track progress over time.
Profit: Rethinking Value Creation
The old split between “making money” and “doing good” is out of date. Using three simple anchors—Orientation, Organization and Operationalization—you’ll align purpose across generations, set up structures that connect operating companies, investing and giving, and build impact into routine decisions. The result is a coherent approach to how profit is created and used.
You will be able to:
- Map today’s orientation toward social value and agree on shared aims.
- Design structures (roles, vehicles and decision rights) that coordinate efforts.
- Put aims into practice through policies on capital allocation, purchasing and measurement.
- Lead productive “both/and” conversations when trade‑offs appear.