Family Business Teaching and Training Programs
TEACH TEACHPrograms and academic resources
Our programs and academic resources provide a shared learning foundation, widely disseminated across HEC Paris and the broader family business community.
Courses on Family Businesses
HEC Paris offers all its students courses on family businesses, enabling future leaders and trusted advisors to deepen their understanding of this unique model.
Audience: Family business owners, shareholders, successors, and advisors.
Duration: 12 days
Family businesses and their leaders face specific challenges that this certificate is designed to address. In addition to a governance simulation, it includes three short programs of three days each: Governance & Leadership, Governance & Strategy, and Governance & Transmission.
In French
Start date: September 24, 2025
The goal of this program is to deepen understanding of governance bodies, analyze family dynamics, and master best practices in responsible governance.
Start date: November 4, 2025
This program focuses on key issues such as innovation, CSR, and strategy, using strategic committees as a framework to ensure long-term sustainability.
Start date: December 9, 2025
At the heart of this program is the ability to identify, understand, and activate the key levers for successful family business succession.
Audience: SME and mid-cap company leaders, particularly from family businesses.
Duration: 12 days
Start date: December 1, 2025
Specifically designed for SME and Middle-market managers who are responsible for the sustainability and development of their company, this unique program will enable you to enhance your managerial know-how and benefit from specific advice.
Start date: December 1st, 2025
The program provides essential tools to formalize, decide upon, and communicate your development strategy.
Audience : EMBA
Duration : November 9h –14th 2025
Explores the evolving governance needs of organizations and the changing nature of conflicts of interest throughout their life cycle, using a simulation of a family business as a case study. Special emphasis is placed on how the requirements for effective board governance shift as an organization progresses through its life stages.
Audience: MSc, MBA, EMBA
Duration: 5 weeks, April–May 2026
This certificate is run in a five-week intensive format, focusing on how to become an agent of change with a broader vision of business. Each week focuses on one of the key building blocks – governance, strategy, finance/performance, and people/leadership – that together form the foundations to build more impactful corporations. The last module “Purpose & Family Business” explores how purpose shapes the governance of family businesses and proposes to learn from family owners who have placed purpose at the heart of their businesses.
Audience: MBA & EMBA
Date:
Winter elective: 4 days, March 8-9-10-11, 2027
Spring Elective: 3 days, May 26-27-28, 2027
"Leading and Owning the Family Enterprise" : a three-day elective offered within HEC Paris’s MBA and EMBA programs.
Audience: MSc X-HEC Entrepreneurs
Date: January to March 2026
The Master of Science Ecole Polytechnique – HEC Entrepreneurs includes a dedicated track on entrepreneurship through acquisition, with a specific module focused on family business transmission. Interested students have the opportunity to work alongside a family business successor.
Audience: Master 1
Date: January 5–23, 2026
This academy explores the role of strategic advisors in supporting family businesses as they articulate their values, ensure long-term impact, and structure their philanthropic vision. Bankers, consultants, and lawyers help these companies transform their values into lasting impact and secure their legacy. The program examines how family businesses and their trusted advisors contribute to building a more human-centered economy.
Audience: Students - offered as part of the summer schools.
Requirement to take part: access to a family business. Spots are strictly limited.
Dates: June 15 - 26 & June 29 - July 10
Family Business Voices is a student challenge: coached by the Center's researchers, participants conduct their own case interview with a family business, from a kick-off workshop on the HEC Paris campus to the submission of a recorded interview and a write-up. What you gain: qualitative interview training, access to an international family business community, and a participation certificate.
CASE STUDIES AND BEHAVIORAL SIMULATIONS
- Family Businesses and Leadership in France — "A Family Business Succession Story: Mathieu Lustrerie" — Associate Professor Valérie Gauthier & Dr Cécile De Lisle
- Family Business growth-versus-family-control dilemma in USA — "Savannah Bananas: Aiming for 1 billion fans" — Associate Professor Nils Plambeck
- Family Business & external investors — "Poclain: Reinforcing Family Control for the Future" — Affiliated Professor Philippe Pelé-Clamour.
- Family Business Board of Directors Behavioral Simulation — "Dorsay Logistics: A Family Succession" — Affiliated Professors Philippe Pelé-Clamour and Gérard de Maupeou, and Cécile Helme-Guizon, Lecturer.
- Academic Theories In Family Business Research, A Pedagogical Note by Angèle Marinelli, Philippe Pelé Clamour & Cécile de Lisle
- Family Firms and Emotions: Insights from Scientific Literature, by Caroline Nicolas & Cécile de Lisle
- How can emotions be effectively managed during succession processes? Insights from Scientific Literature, by Caroline Nicolas & Cécile de Lisle
Worldwide Student Thesis
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