The theme of succession in family based SMEs is an important and complex issue involving the companies themselves and all the business environment including suppliers to customers. This issue becomes relevant in Europe, where more than 90% of the businesses are SMEs, mostly familiar based. The transference of the company leadership from an actual leader to an heir - is an unique moment in business lifetime to innovate and reinforce the sustainability of the business or, conversely, to fail, putting in risk jobs, suppliers and clients. Annually, more than 700.000 companies in European Union cross succession processes. Studies outstand that approximately 1/3 of the entrepreneurs responsible for the leadership of family businesses will abandon their activity during next 10 years, involving directly more than 2,8 million of jobs, and only 50% of the family businesses reach the 2nd generation and only 20% reach the 3rd generation. These facts have a common root at European level: the lack of skills on the design and implementation of succession plans and on transgenerational entrepreneurship, from the part of the actual leaders and their heirs/successors. Project’s main goal is to design, develop and test learning tools and methodologies, on several themes relevant for the family business succession process, targeted to the actual leaders and their heirs/successors, Key-people and other collaborators, in order to support SMEs to face and cross the succession process in a successful way. The project outputs widely cover all the succession process - awareness raising toward the actual leaders that it’s time to prepare the succession, identification of the best moment to act, support on the identification and selection of the most adequate successor/heir, preparation of succession plan, support on its implementation - are targeted to both intervenient, and consist in learning tools focused on the organization aspects and methodologies and guidelines for training/coaching. This way, the project also envisages the creation of capacity within support organizations to train and coach the involved parties. The project envisages to provide intervention on actual leaders and heirs/successors, key-people in SMEs and collaborators, who lack skills for the sustainable succession in SME, as well as enable trainers and coaches to provide support to the mentioned target-groups. The outputs foreseen are the following: - Tools for scanning opportunities and needs to start succession process, scanning training needs and creating awareness raising, constituted by an evidence based research on succession planning knowledge and transgenerational entrepreneurship skills & training needs in SMEs, a scanning training needs tools targeted to the actual leaders and heirs with potential of awareness raising, and an opportunities’ scanning tool targeted to the actual leader for the start of the succession process. - Comprehensive training paths/curricula and a contents’ Portfolio on To Implement a Sustainable Succession in family based SMEs, - B-learning on to Implement a Sustainable Succession in family based SMEs - Trainers/coaches resources, consisting in a common methodology on coaching for Sustainable Succession in family based SMEs, and correspondent support tools for trainers and coaches, including a package for training the trainers/coaches. All these Outputs will be delivered into 6 different languages of the partnership: Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Spanish, Italian and English. The project impact will be visible at the following levels: - Enhancement of knowledge on transgenerational entrepreneurship; - Enhancement of knowledge on challenges and facilitators factors of the business succession and how to control/monitor them. -Up-skilled actual leader on define a succession plan, choose the successor (heir), prepare the organizational environment, involve suppliers and clients, and prepare the heir. -Up-skilled heirs and key-people namely by providing them with a special training to potentiate the process -Up-skill all collaborators involved on soft skills -Enhancement of the Integration of ICT in learning and training for these target groups -Trainers and coaches prepared to support the definition and implementation of the succession strategy. -Improve of the high quality level and open and innovative training for VET learners in the field of transgenerational entrepreneurship and other themes related to be applicable in the SME succession and other related contexts -A robust and motivated networking of good practices in succession -Introduction of the gender dimension, in the succession process, outstanding the role of the women in the process, respecting and potentiating the differences and reflecting them in the envisaged intellectual outputs.
The theme of succession in family-based SMEs is an important and complex issue involving the companies themselves and all the business environment from suppliers to customers and other stakeholders. This issue becomes relevant in Europe, where more than 90% of the businesses are SMEs, mostly family-based. The transference of the company leadership from an actual leader to a successor is an unique moment in business lifetime to innovate and reinforce the sustainability of the business or, conversely, to fail, putting in risk many jobs, suppliers and clients. Annually, more than 700.000 companies in European Union cross succession processes. Studies outstand that approximately 1/3 of the entrepreneurs responsible for the leadership of family businesses will abandon their activity during next 10 years, involving directly more than 2,8 million of jobs, and only 50% of the family businesses reach the 2nd generation and only 20% reach the 3rd generation. These facts have a common root at European level: the lack of skills on the design and implementation of succession plans and on transgenerational entrepreneurship, from the part of the actual leaders and their potential successors. Project’s main goal is to design, develop and test learning tools and methodologies, on several themes relevant for the family business succession process, targeted to the actual leaders and their potential successors, key-people and other collaborators, in order to support family-based SMEs to face and cross the succession process in a successful way. The project outputs widely cover all the succession process - awareness raising toward the actual leaders that it’s time to prepare the succession, identification of the best moment to act, support on the identification and selection of the most adequate successor, preparation of succession plan, support on its implementation - are targeted to both intervenient, and consist in learning tools focused on the organization aspects and methodologies and guidelines for training/coaching. This way, the project also envisages the creation of capacity within support organizations to train and coach the involved parties. The project envisages to provide intervention on actual leaders and successors, key-people in SMEs and other collaborators, who lack skills for the sustainable succession in SME, as well as enable trainers and coaches to provide support to the mentioned target-groups. The outputs produced during the project are the following: - A scanning tool aiming to scan opportunities and needs to start succession process, to scan training needs and create awareness raising, constituted by an evidence based research on succession planning knowledge and transgenerational entrepreneurship skills & training needs in SMEs, a scanning training needs tools targeted to the actual leaders and successors with potential of awareness raising, and to identify opportunities for the start of the succession process. - Comprehensive training paths/curricula and a contents’ Portfolio on “How to Implement a Sustainable Succession in family-based SMEs” - B-learning on How to Implement a Sustainable Succession in family based-SMEs, which includes a manual for users, a Demo for dissemination and trial purposes and a Piloting Report - Trainers/coaches resources, consisting in a common methodology on coaching for Sustainable Succession in family based-SMEs, and a correspondent support tools for trainers and coaches, including a package for training the trainers/coaches. All these Outputs are available in 6 different languages of the partnership: English, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Spanish and Italian. The project impact will is already visible at the following levels: - Enhancement of knowledge on transgenerational entrepreneurship. - Enhancement of knowledge on challenges and facilitators factors of the business succession and how to control/monitor them. - Up-skilled actual leaders on defining a succession plan, choosing the successor(s) and preparing him/her/them, preparing the organizational environment, involving suppliers and clients. - Up-skilled successors and key-people namely by providing them with a special training to potentiate the process -Up-skill all collaborators involved mainly on soft skills - Enhancement of the Integration of ICT in learning and training for these target groups - Trainers and coaches prepared to support the definition and implementation of the succession strategy. - Improve the quality level and open and innovative training for VET learners in the field of transgenerational entrepreneurship and other related themes to be applicable in the SME succession and other related contexts. - A robust and motivated networking of good practices in family-based business succession. - Balance the role of the women in the process, respecting and potentiating the differences.