Policy

EU Projects

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 areas of:

a) Smooth succession and business continuity, accounting for multi-dimensional factors (leadership, management, governance ownership, legal issues), through failed and successful cases;

b) Strategy for growth and internationalisation, built on innovation and regeneration;

c) Development of entrepreneurship, intrapreneurship and interpreneurship across generations, converging the entrepreneurship and family business training content, promoting a start-up culture and innovation-based growth mindset within family businesses, while considering other strategies besides succession (exit strategies, external investors coming in, etc.);

d) Inclusive and responsible family business acts to ensure they adopt not only CSR practices but the full cycle, 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.

SUFABU, in full name “Succession in Family Businesses | Training Model for Sustainable Succession Process in Family Businesses” is an EU funded Erasmus+ project that responds to the needs of European family businesses that currently face a task of intergenerational exchange. The project aims to create a flexible training system focused on the succession process in family businesses and, at the same time, to raise awareness of the obstacles that family entrepreneurs experience on their way.

Family businesses play a crucial role in sustainable economic development, job creation, regional support and competitiveness of the European countries. However, they face several specific obstacles which make it more challenging for them to survive in a long-term perspective. Among others, they face the challenge of transferring the company to the next generation. The SUFABU project’s main objectives are to help family entrepreneurs to manage the succession process successfully and to raise awareness about the necessity of implementing family businesses into state legislation.

The main output of the proposed project is a complex and exhaustive learning platform based on different and complementary learning tools that will provide family entrepreneurs with skills, knowledge and competencies to prepare for intergenerational exchange and realize it as smooth as possible. Thanks to the training platform, family businessmen will learn how to plan the process ahead, how is the process handled in different countries, different contexts and different business backgrounds, what are the possible obstacles which could occur during the process and much more.

The consortium is made up from 7 partners from 6 countries, the Czech Republic, Belgium, Italy, Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom.