“Family firms have been the invisible giants of the European economy for far too long. It is time to stand up and fulfil their true potential in Europe! Family firms are crucially important for Europe. They make a significant conribution to Europe's GNP and employment, and tend to be great innovators, with a longer-term vision."Jose Manuel Durao Barroso, Former President of the European Commission (EC) Scope and Benefits: Around 14mln EU companies (65-85% of all EU businesses) are family businesses, contributing 50% to Europe’s GDP and more than 60 mln jobs (60% of all jobs). Our project, SPRING, aims to help EU family businesses to fulfil their potential, by offering them a complete package with the necessary training, mentoring, support and guidance in the following areas:A. Smooth succession and business continuity, accounting for multi-dimensional factors (leadership, management, governmance, ownership, legal issues), through failed and successful casesB. Strategy for growth and internationalisation, built on innovation and regeneration.C. Development of entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and interpreneurship across generations, converging the entrepeneurship and family business training content, promoting a start-up culture and an enterprising and innovation-based growth mindset within family businesses and considering other strategies besides succession (exit strategies, external investors in the company, etc.)D. Inclusive and responsible family business acts to ensure they adopt not only CSR practices but the full cycle (circular economics), to maximise value creation for all involved stakeholders, promoting inclusive entrepreneurship among the next generation members and female leaders.Main activities and outputs: Design and pilot an innovative and practical SPRING Training and Consultancy programme, jointly offered by renowned EU universities and adult training and consulting companies. This will be the first of its kind in Europe.
The project's aim was to bring together universities and consulting/training firms, from multi-disciplinary backgrounds and with diverse experiences from all over Europe, to share their knowledge and skills for a new, more innovative and more competitive Europe, through the regeneration of family businesses. Partners aimed to develop a practical and innovative training programme to facilitate family businesses become more profitable, competitive and sustainable.
Family businesses account for more than 60% of EU companies and greatly contributing to EU competitiveness and job creation, but are still facing a range of challenges, such as recruiting skilled staff, increased competition, declining profitability and surviving in a post-pandemic world. They need to be constantly informed of state-of-the-art practices of good business management that allow them to adapt to a fast-changing environment.
<< Background >> Family businesses account for more than 60% of EU companies and greatly contributing to EU competitiveness and job creation, but are still facing a range of challenges, such as recruiting skilled staff, increased competition, declining profitability and surviving in a post-pandemic world. They need to be constantly informed of state-of-the-art practices of good business management that allow them to adapt to a fast-changing environment. << Objectives >> The project's aim was to bring together universities and consulting/training firms, from multi-disciplinary backgrounds and with diverse experiences from all over Europe, to share their knowledge and skills for a new, more innovative and more competitive Europe, through the regeneration of family businesses. Partners aimed to develop a practical and innovative training programme to facilitate family businesses become more profitable, competitive and sustainable. << Implementation >> The project started with a state-of-the-art and needs' analysis using focus groups, interviews and a European-wide survey. Data were utilised by partners to develop the training programmes in order to address the identified needs of family businesses and close identified gaps of existing curricula. The developed training material was pilot tested via online and interactive webinars with 240 participants from 44 countries, which were all recorded and uploaded on the project's eLearning platform. << Results >> Results include a comprehensive state-of-the-art report, an innovative practical Training programme for family businesses, a Train-the-Trainers Guidebook, a practical handbook on succession planning for family business owners, a Succession Planning mobile app that serves as a user-friendly self-assessment tool for business owners and managers and, finally, a freely accessible eLearning platform that contains the training materials, guidebooks, handbooks and recorded webinars.