Family Business Audiocast | Episode 19 | Peter Vogel | IMD Business School

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About Our Guest:

Peter Vogel is a Professor of Family Business and Entrepreneurship at IMD Business School where he also serves as the Director of the IMD Global Family Business Center. He is the non-executive Chairman of Delta Venture Partners AG, an Associate Partner at the Cambridge Family Enterprise Group, and a member of several expert networks. He was recognized as one of the “Top 100 Family Influencers” by Family Capital. Peter’s expertise lies in collaborating with families, owners, board members, and executive teams of family enterprises and family offices around the world, emphasizing governance, change management, strategic development, organizational renewal, and succession planning. Peter has contributed significantly to the field through his research and publications in respected peer-reviewed journals and several books and reports. A prominent speaker, Vogel has shared his insights at high-profile events such as TEDxLausanne and the G20 Young Entrepreneurs’ Alliance Summit.

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[Transcript]

R. Adam Smith: [Intro] Welcome to the Family Business Audiocast on LinkedIn. I am R. Adam Smith, creator of this audiocast series. As an entrepreneur, investor, founder, investment banker, and board leader the last 25 years, I am fortunate for my many experiences within the family firm industry.

A warm thank you to our live audience on LinkedIn today – and for those listening in the future.

A brief comment on why I created this broadcast: private companies are a passion of mine, having grown up in a family of entrepreneurs, and having engaged for two decades in deals, strategic transformations, investments, and boards, with an array of fascinating family enterprises, family firms, and family offices. I founded this series to offer a useful platform for listeners to hear from veterans, academics, and leaders in the vast family firm ecosystem. Whether you are a family business owner, building, running, or advising a family office, or just expanding your family office activities, I hope these conversations are useful and enlightening. And now, it is time to turn our attention to our [01:00] accomplished guests on today’s episode.

I'm very pleased to host today Peter Vogel. Peter, welcome for joining us today. It's great to see you here.

Peter Vogel: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

R. Adam Smith: Yeah, thank you. Where are you today?

Peter Vogel: I'm in Zürich.

R. Adam Smith: Lovely. Lovely place.

A few words on Peter. I'm just going to brag about you briefly here. Peter Vogel is a distinguished academic and entrepreneur specializing in family business and entrepreneurship at the IMD Business School, where he also serves as the Director of the Global Family Business Center. Peter is also the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy at the school. At the center, he directs and founded the world's first family business program called Navigating Your Family Enterprise Into the Future, and also later, leading the family office. Also at the center, he is the director and founder of the IMD Global Family Business Award which many of you may know has been established for [02:00] quite a while — actually back to 1996 — and is now one of the most sought-after prizes in the field globally.

Recognized for his contributions to the field, he has written influential works such as his new book Family Philanthropy Navigator and also advises family enterprises globally through the school and also himself on strategic transformations and succession and governance. He's also the founder of Delta Venture Partners and he has been named a top family business influencer by the respected Family Capital.

So, that's just a part of Peter's background but it's great to have you today. Let's get started. Peter, tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into working with IMD and setting up the center.

Peter Vogel: Super. Well, thanks a lot. Hello, everybody. And thanks again for having me. I think you gave a pretty good overview of the background of where I am. I joined IMD seven years ago. So, while I am directing the center, I did not [03:00] found it. So, I didn't create it, I inherited it, so to say. I took over some of the legacy work. Indeed, IMD has been a little bit the birthplace of a family business executive education. Some of the great founders of our field, you know, John Ward, John Davis, and the like have been at IMD many moons ago creating those programs which I now have the privilege of directing.

So, I come from the field of entrepreneurship and there's been family business backgrounds as well on our family side and those areas then merged over time more serendipitously than anything else really where I started working with enterprising families on entrepreneurship, helping next-generation members create their own ventures, invest in ventures — so the nexus between the family enterprise space and the startup space — and that then led to working [04:00] on succession and governance and family office and all the other aspects of then really building out the more holistic family enterprise system and working with families through multiple transitions and transformations.

So that's, in a nutshell, kind of my transition into the space and the work on family business, family office, and also philanthropy.

R. Adam Smith: Wonderful. And I think also a shout-out to St. Gallen, your alma mater earlier. They have quite a strong family business and entrepreneurship flag as well.

Peter Vogel: Absolutely, yeah.

R. Adam Smith: Okay, moving on to our conversation. So, thinking about your role as Professor of Family Business and also as Chair of the Family Business Philanthropy at IMD, tell us how you think about the academic research and incorporating these findings into practical strategies for family enterprises.

Peter Vogel: [05:00] Yeah, so I think this is super critical, right? I mean, I think the world of family enterprise — similar to the field of entrepreneurship, as a matter of fact — while it is, of course, in some way an academic discipline, it's something that very much lives of the practice. And so, I consider myself very much kind of a “pracademic”; while I do very much enjoy the academic side of things, I find disproportionate pleasure in actually working in the real world, working with enterprising families. And, I very much see my mission in helping enterprising families make better decisions for themselves, for the various stakeholders that are affected by their family enterprise system, and in some way bridge the gap between academic research and insights and kind of drawing insights and lessons from the academic work that many experts do on a daily basis and [06:00] translating that into simple frameworks, assessments, models, tools that are grounded in that rigorous and relevant research but then are translated in a way that is practical and applicable to all members of enterprising families, irrespective of their educational or professional background.

And, you know, I leverage all of these models that we create. You mentioned the philanthropy and the family office navigators; I leverage them in the programs, in the advisory work, and I also find a lot of pleasure in creating these frameworks and also making them accessible not only to the families, but also to other professionals and educators to use it in their work, because the work that we do with families is, by nature of design, not really scalable. It's time-consuming. We spend one-on-one time with families. And of course, with every family [07:00] we spend time with, we cannot spend time with another family. So, I love to create these tools and frameworks and have others use them in their work, and through that, try to create some sort of a scale, even if it's not on a monetary basis, but at least on an intellectual basis.

R. Adam Smith: Right. That's great, thank you. We've covered some of this “pracademic” content with some of your colleagues. I understand it’s tricky to juggle both, but also exciting to bridge findings of deep research. Such as Massimo Bau and Alfredo de Massis, and also Christina Wing and her colleagues at Legacy. Martin Rohl has also created a healthy amount of research and findings, and of course John Davis, going way back to the CFEG platform. So, it's great to hear your dedication to [08:00] bringing information and knowledge and empowering family businesses and family enterprises and, of course, not just family offices.

Maybe talk a bit about your views on family business and the different nomenclature and different thoughts of the industry and what it actually is.

There's this movement — I think we've seen this a bit with Richard Wolkowitz and also at Dentons — talking more about business families, right? Given that there's more than one holding, the terminology is changing. So, maybe just walk us through how large the family businesses are in the world, and then how does that relate to, in your opinion, family offices as an organization?

Peter Vogel: Yeah, so I think when we look at family enterprise systems, obviously they evolve over time, over generations, over decades, over centuries in some cases. And of course, you know, it's essentially a multi-dimensional [09:00] space, right? There is the family equation, there's the ownership equation, there's the business and asset equation, there's the leadership and governance equation. So, there are a number of dimensions that we're looking at here. And every single system is evolving differently.

And there are cultural implications, there are regional differences, there are family specifics. And some families, obviously, you know, they are very prominent families that are very large in size in terms of family and owners, but very concentrated on one business. And then there are some smaller families that have a very vast portfolio of enterprises that they have interest in. So, every system obviously is very different, also in terms of governance. Are we organized in the holding? Are we all holding individual shares in different businesses? etc., right? And this is very unique for every [10:00] single-family system.

Now, you mentioned the aspect of a business family. Sure. I mean, again, what we do see over time and over generations, very often the unit of analysis shifts from a family business to whether you call it a business family or an enterprising family. I mean, you see so many different names and labels. We talk about enterprising families because it disconnects from a business.

If you look at the founder generation as an entrepreneur, you create a company and everything you think about is the business. Everything revolves around the business. How will the business do? How will the business continue? And then as your children then get into the age of thinking about succession, you know, who will take over my business? Right? Those are the classical thoughts in the early stages of a family enterprise system. And then, over time and over generations, you know, maybe the business doesn't even exist anymore, or we started to diversify [11:00] and in our total portfolio of assets, the business, which was the legacy asset, maybe only makes up 5% of our total wealth. And then suddenly the business is not the spotlight anymore, but the family becomes more of the focus because then suddenly we need to juggle multiple branches across three, four generations, and hundreds of shareholders over all kinds of different assets with different profiles and interests and risk profiles. And suddenly, then this business family or enterprising family becomes more prominent in the debates within the family realms.

So, I think that is what you're alluding to is this kind of shift in narrative, which I don't think is so much a shift of narrative in the field, but more, I mean, it's always been there. It's just that we're now starting to spend more time thinking about these later stages of evolution of these systems, so to say, [12:00] where the family, the ownership group, and these different dimensions start to receive more attention next to the business, which always will have attention, right? So, it's just how do we allocate the time that we think about things.

R. Adam Smith: Right, I think “systems” is an interesting word. I'm glad that, at least for me, I cover over a hundred family offices and most of them are single-family offices doing deals, doing directs, and they're involved in buying companies or investing in companies and they tend to be operating from a single entity.

But, given the expansion of the industry as a business, and some of your colleagues here on the phone are dealing with organizations that are quite larger — I know that's the case with Vicki and Monika and Richard and Alexander, of course. I know that these organizations are getting much larger. So, I think one thing that's not really covered well, because the information is opaque, is how [13:00] extensive and complex the family office or enterprise is becoming with multiple holdings.

Given where you sit, having written books and gathered data on this, how large are some of these organizations becoming? It would be interesting to talk about that briefly. And how much larger can they continue to become, let's say, looking at a BDT & MSD or a Pritzker type of organization?

Peter Vogel: Yeah, well, I mean, again, I think this is a very much family-by-family type of constellation, you know? I mean, obviously, in Europe, you have family systems where you have thousands of family members, you know? I think there are examples like the Mulliez family or the Brenninkmeijer family or the Wendel family where we have 1,000 plus family members in such a system with sometimes hundreds of organizations.

Again, the Mulliez family has more than 200-something enterprises in their ecosystem. [14:00] The Brenninkmeijer family, you know, is well-known for C&A as their legacy brand. Today, C&A, of course, is still one of their brands but, you know, they've diversified so massively through a multitude of holdings, through a multitude of investment vehicles with very specific, different, diverse types of purposes. So, I think most fundamentally there is, technically speaking, not a real limit to any of these complexities.

R. Adam Smith: Okay.

Peter Vogel: I mean, obviously managing them over generations becomes very tricky, right? Because then we need to start to think about, how do we keep these systems functioning? Then they start operating very similar to small states in some way.

If you have thousands of family members and shareholders and entities to deal with, then you need to apply governance practices that are very similar to, of course in an abstracted level, to small states. And how do you function? How do you [15:00] channel decisions? Who's even allowed to make decisions? How do we incentivize? How do we compensate? Who gets to do what? If somebody wants to create a company, where does the funding come from? We have a family piggy bank; okay, who has access to what? Who's even part of the club? Who's not?

So, you create systems and governance mechanisms and rules that become essentially constitutions in the literal sense. So, I think from that point of view, technically there is no limit. I mean, I think the most complex systems we know are some of the ones I mentioned before. Now, again, I think it boils down to what is the goal of the family? What is the goal of the ownership group? You know, the ownership strategy. What does good look like for us? Do we want to be a big clan with thousands of people holding everything together? Do we want to diversify? But technically speaking, there is no limit. And within that such an [16:00] ecosystem, a family office is one of the constituents of such an ecosystem.

R. Adam Smith: Right. We've covered legacy a great deal in this audiocast series to bridge the core functionality of the family business in terms of wealth creation, operational scale, with the legacy that that wealth creates. It can be through buying companies, or it can be through philanthropy, or even lifestyle, art collections, or hard assets.

We'll come back to legacy briefly. Just back to your previous comments about the scaling of private companies. Where in the world are the greatest concentrations of private wealth and private companies/family offices? I know there's certainly extensive expansion in Singapore, which is a wonderful place to be, but also very favorable tax code and government support. Just curious for our listeners, where do you see this concentration of [17:00] private wealth being built? And then let's say going ahead the next 10 years.

Peter Vogel: Yeah, so, let's take a spotlight a bit on the family office space and the private wealth. I mean, obviously, there are some of the legacy ecosystems. I mean, in the US you have a number of locations that are definitely hotspots of wealth and family offices. In Europe, you have, of course, London, you have Switzerland, Zürich, Geneva, Tug. [1] Traditionally in Asia, you have Hong Kong, you have Japan. Now, since a few years, very aggressively, Singapore with all the framework conditions, and we can discuss that in a bit more detail later some of the pros and cons of all of that. Of course, I mean, in the Middle East, Dubai has put a lot of emphasis on establishing itself as a family office hub.

So, I think there are a few of those [18:00] ecosystems. There are, of course, by nature of design, some of the smaller island states that have also positioned themselves as hubs for certain, but very fiduciary, reasons. So, you have some of those more legacy ecosystems and then the newer ones and, I mean, you mentioned Singapore and of course, I mean, they've approached this in a very strategic way like Singapore more or less always does with whatever they do, which by the way is one of the reasons why Singapore repeatedly ranks among the most competitive countries in the world in our IMD World Competitiveness ranking.

I mean, they come up with a strategy and then they execute it very diligently. And one of the strategies they as a country have decided to focus on is to be a hub for family offices, especially Asian families but also global families.

Now, you know, the last couple of years, and COVID has [19:00] probably done part of the trick. I guess the fact that there's been somewhat of a political instability in Hong Kong a few years before has also definitely supported that movement. But, of course, if we now look at Singapore today, I mean, sure, they say they've attracted hundreds, arguably more than a thousand, new single-family offices, whatever that means, right? But, of course, we already started to see now some of the downsides of that. Well, are these really family offices? Then there have been some news articles around money laundering, this and that, right? So, of course, then, whatever you do in a very quick way, then you will have all kinds of side effects that were unwanted by nature of design.

But I think they've done a tremendous job at systematically looking at some of the key parameters around framework conditions for family offices, sure, from a tax point of view, from an investment [20:00] access point of view, and also then the talent equation, trying to create dedicated programs to help boost family officer training, to create a talent pool for the families, etc. So, I think they've done a pretty diligent job at that, but maybe a little bit too quick in my view.

R. Adam Smith: I understand. Let's shift back to your own personal craft and productivity. So, you wear a lot of hats. It's exciting to have you today as a guest, and we are just here for a half hour. So, maybe tell us a bit about your own passions and legacies and what you write about, including the Family Office Navigator and the Family Philanthropy Navigator, which I'm now reading. These are great resources.

What led you to write and inspire others and create these books and guides? And also, thinking about having written those books, what are some of the few fundamental advice/thoughts that you have for families to navigate their [22:00] own organizations?

Peter Vogel: Yeah, so the navigators, as you said, we published the Family Philanthropy Navigator in 2020, the Family Office Navigator last year, there will be a Family Enterprise Navigator in a couple of years from now. These are, as I said, tools and frameworks and assessments, models that are there to help families navigate their journeys, whether it is into philanthropy or whether it is into the world of family office, in a very structured way. These are very design-driven books.

These are books, but at the same time, they're not books, they're frameworks and very design-driven, very hands-on, very practical. They're grounded in research, but they're translated in a way that, again, everybody inside the family can participate in the conversation, because especially those two journeys, the philanthropy and the family office journey, we believe have to be [22:00] inclusive journeys where everybody from the family needs to be on board, needs to be at the table. And it's not just the one cousin that should march ahead on behalf of the family and decide on the entire investment strategy for the family because maybe not everybody has the same risk profile or investment interests.

And so, we created these toolkits, and frameworks, and books to empower families in their journeys to help them go through some of the key questions in their journeys to either create their respective activities or to redesign existing ones. Of course, it also caters to an audience that has a family office or has a philanthropic activity and they just want to challenge the status quo and rethink it and adjust it because maybe a generational change or other parameters have changed over time.

So, that has been really the main motivation and I think, at the end, [23:00] every family is different, but I think, in the end, it's very much like an entrepreneurial process. It's like creating a new venture, and we just want to encourage as many families as possible to go through this as diligently as they would when they create a new company, more or less, right?

R. Adam Smith: That's great. Maybe just also share an inspiring story from your times consulting families in the market or something that inspires you that you can share with the audience today.

Peter Vogel: Yeah, well, I think what I love doing in my work when I work with families, and by the way, I truly believe that it's an immense privilege to work with these family systems. And so, what I love doing is to work with complex, interconnected, holistic family enterprise systems and to help them go through transitions and [24:00] transformations, whether it is on the family dimension, on the ownership dimension, on the business and asset dimension, or whatever it is. And I love to think about these more complex, intertwined puzzle pieces and to see how one thing affects the other, right? So, these interconnections.

Now, you know, obviously there are a number of different examples and every single story is probably a bit unique, but maybe one example of a holistic transformation journey that we've been on now for more than four years where we work very intimately with such a system, a family enterprise, multiple businesses, a family office, a foundation, a legacy business, which is partially listed, other businesses that they’re invested in going through a generational transition where we, you know, on the one side, we help them reposition from an ownership strategy point of view [25:00] where they want to go, go through the ownership and leadership transition, set up a new holding in a different jurisdiction, equip that holding with a new board of directors, train the board, sit into all the board meetings as a board observer, created a new family office, created a new shareholder foundation, which is a charitable foundation and owns part of the holding so part of the dividends escalate out and they can be deployed for philanthropic purposes.

And again, you know, what I love about this is that you start to see the interconnectedness of all of these pieces. When you project yourself 50 years into the future or take the year 2100, you know, and you walk into your family enterprise system, what do you want it to look like? Do we want to be, you know, still a very united, harmonious, enterprising family with a portfolio of businesses? What is our role in society? What is our philanthropic [26:00] activities? What does our investment portfolio look like? Will our businesses still be family-run and led or will we have other professionals that run the organizations? Etc.

And so, from there then we can backtrack and engineer the system as we want it to be. So, this is one example of such a transformation journey, which is still ongoing, where we then really cascade from family and ownership dimension into corporate governance and to investment governance and then strategy, you know? Working with the executive committee and just really cascading down level-by-level and making sure that all of the dots are connected that when the owners say we have these and these and these ambitions, that this is clear also from an organizational point of view and from a corporate strategy perspective. And that's what fascinates me. I find these integrated transformation journeys absolutely fascinating and [27:00] very rewarding and I believe also impactful.

R. Adam Smith: Good. That's a good jumping-off point to talk about evolution and growth. And I just want to call out some recent growth and accomplishments of some of our guests here.

I see Vicki Morton from Wingspan. I know that they have some recent awards, so congratulations to you Vicki. Give our best to Christina. Richard, I see you've also been very productive on your own brand and some articles and publications, so that's wonderful. And we also see recent accomplishments by Monika Nadova in Slovakia, and wonderful to see her joining the Hippocampus Advisory Board this month, so that's great.

And you know, because we're talking about legacy and where do these organizations go, is it just for wealth or is it for impact on society? I know you cover this topic greatly with your team [28:00] at CFEG. Maybe talk a bit about your robust circle of colleagues at CFEG for those that don't know about it.

And, of course, congratulations to John Davis and John Griff and all of that organization-building over the years. I think it would be helpful for people to know about that as well.

Peter Vogel: Yeah, so, the Family Office Navigator that we've been doing has been a joint program and a joint project between IMD, which of course is kind of my main anchor, so to say, and then the Cambridge Family Enterprise Group where I am affiliated, as well. And of course, I mean, you know, working very closely with John and the team there.

I think what John has created there is quite unique. I think everybody who's in the space would agree with that, that building such an enterprise of advisory is never easy. And so, I think [29:00] from that point of view, building an ecosystem of experts that are so complementary in nature and touch all of these different aspects of a family enterprise system in a holistic way is not an easy thing to do. So, I think from that point of view, I think he and they have done a tremendous job.

Now, I say “they” because, of course, while I'm affiliated, it's not my main role. So, from that point of view, you know, I cannot take any credit for anything that they've achieved. I'm just one of the puzzle pieces in their bigger puzzle. Now, of course, I can speak on behalf of IMD and what we do in the center where, again, also we bring together these different puzzle pieces for these more integrative holistic transformations.

And I think one of the challenges I believe that everybody who works with enterprising families will quickly resonate with is, you know, of course, you build a very [30:00] intimate, trusted relationship with a family over time as an advisor, as an educator, as compared to other domains of advisory or consulting for example, where, you know, if you take some of the big consulting firms where you can imagine very easily there's a managing partner and then there's an army of project managers and all these other things that go in and then deliver their job.

In our domain, it's much more difficult to build large teams because it's such a trust-based working relationship with families and it's almost like a flipped model where you have a support team but the delivery is always on this one individual, the trusted advisor. So, I think from that point of view, it is always a challenge to build such a strong complementary ecosystem of experts to deliver on the different necessities and needs that families have.

And then, from that point of view, I think CFEG has done a terrific job [31:00] at building such a platform of complementary skills, and assets, and capabilities. I think that's not an easy job to do in this space.

R. Adam Smith: Very true, very true. Well, we had the luxury of having several of the advisors on this show. Just briefly, since we're talking about the industry, I'd like to also shout out to the elegance and effectiveness of the editorial content that François Botha has been putting out in Simple. So, a brief shout-out to you, François.

Now, just one thing. On the technology side, you are not only an academic and a manager, but you have a wonky side to you in terms of technology coming from a biomedical engineering master’s and a PhD in management of technology and entrepreneurship at the École Polytechnique.

So, I’m not going to spend the next couple days talking about technology with you because that would be intimidating. But I'm curious, [32:00] because we have a couple of guests here, and also others are very curious about the leveraging and importance of technology and evolution into the family office and the multifamily office and family office ecosystem for operational effectiveness, but also AI.

Could you just talk a bit about your view on the importance of technology, and in particular AI, relative to family offices?

Peter Vogel: Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, François would have a lot of views on that, probably more than me, but I'm happy to give my two cents to this equation as well. So, I mean, obviously, as a techie, I think technology is great and can do many, many fantastic things. I think that digitalization has and still does transform the family enterprise space quite a lot. That includes the business side, classical governance, family office, [33:00] philanthropy, all of these things.

Now, I think in the family office space, the technology equation is a very obvious one. It's a tricky one. And in fact, I mean, François and I had been discussing that a little bit also not too long ago because, you know, again, there's this very intimate nature of family offices. And, of course, we have a lot of families that especially have generational differences in terms of how flexible you are, how trustworthy you think different IT systems are, etc. So, I mean, obviously, cybersecurity is a big issue, certain digital risks and threats are there where, again, some family members are very reluctant to adopt some of the great tools that technology can leverage or offer families, or that they can leverage, whereby maybe the next generation is [34:00] more open to adopt some of these tools.

So again, I think there is an obvious upside and many families start to leverage that, whether it is from a networking point of view, from an intranet, from a document sharing, from all of these aspects. I think it makes a lot of sense, especially in these very large, scattered family systems that I was referring to earlier.

Technology is a blessing, you know, because, again, we have some families where, you know, the family members inside the families speak five different languages and none overlap, as a matter of fact, and then they have their family meeting in their legacy language where the legacy business was, only that more than half the family members don't even speak that language or understand it. So obviously, there, technology plays a key role.

But then they have some of the challenges, which is again, then some family members saying, ‘now we have somebody or a [35:00] system, an AI system, listening in to our very intimate family conversations,’ talking about AI, where, again, I think some family are just very, very cautious when it comes to adopting some of these smart technologies, in part, rightfully so, but in part also not. And I think that's where then, I think, experts need to come in and also educate families on where they can leverage technology and where they have to be more careful.

R. Adam Smith: Okay, we're gonna wrap up soon. We'll take a comment from the audience, but on that note of technology, I noted today that the famous investor, Steve Cohen, here in the US — a large hedge fund manager, also owner of the Mets — he is convinced that the work week will move to four days, which is a better balance as we see working well in Europe, partly because people are, quote, “less effective on Fridays.” And so, [36:00] there's a certain recognition of reality and efficiency, but also leveraging AI and the power of efficiency, right? So, interesting.

I have a question here on my chat which I'll use. So, one question is to the legacy issue of super-wealthy families giving money away to causes that are less relevant to the benefit of society. Let's say they give them away to a gardener or they give them away to some other family or they buy things that are not core to the business. So, the wealth diffuses out into society, let's say.

What are your thoughts on this and how integrated and essential will philanthropy be, from your point of view, in this transforming industry?

Peter Vogel: Look, I mean, if we look at philanthropy in the context of wider family systems and, I mean, maybe also in the context of this massive transfer of wealth that we're seeing right now over these years, I think one of the big criticisms of [37:00] philanthropy — again, there are cultural differences — but if we look at the US, for example, where again, some of the very large philanthropists are also criticized because of the tax situation that simply the philanthropic activities are taxed differently/not, where, of course, the big criticism is, well, this money could have been used for broader society issues: infrastructure, education, health care, la, la, la.

Now, in Europe, that's slightly different, or depending on the country. So, it's very difficult to generalize and say, you know, what is the role of philanthropy in this? But, I mean, what we do see is in this context of this big transfer of wealth, and of course also with the rising of impact investing and other forms of doing good in the world and trying to find a balance of shifting from only shareholder value creation to [38:00] stakeholder value creation, or doing well and doing good, or inclusive capitalism, and thinking in these more inclusive ways, I think philanthropy can play a critical role. Families can leverage it more strategically, also for family affairs internally, for ownership affairs, for generational transitions, value transmissions.

So, I think philanthropy can be leveraged very smartly by families. I think it has been not only looked at positively, as I said in the beginning over the years. But look, I think, again, that's also in part why we created the Philanthropy Navigator, is to help families give more and give better and give smarter and give faster.

R. Adam Smith: I like that. I encourage you to read that. You can find more about that publication on Peter's website and also IMD. Also, you can reach him on LinkedIn or by email at peter.vogel@imd.org.

[39:00] So yeah, that's great. It's been great to have you today, really enjoyed it. And, of course, we could spend a lot more time together, but this has been a great first conversation here with you, Peter.

Peter Vogel: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure, and pleasure to meet you all, and hope to stay in touch.

R. Adam Smith: Definitely. I'd like to thank you and also our Family Business Audiocast today online. This is R. Adam Smith signing off. Stay tuned for the next episode of the Family Business Audiocast on LinkedIn.

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Explore the strategic intricacies of family business success with the RAS Family Business Audiocast. Join R. Adam Smith as he delves into exclusive discussions with global leaders shaping the future of private wealth and enterprise. Each episode offers a rare glimpse into the core decisions driving prosperity in high-stakes markets. Tune in to gain expert insights and innovative strategies that empower family businesses to thrive across generations.

Available On : Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, iHeart, YouTube

Disclaimer:
Opinions presented are personal and do not represent the positions of speakers’, sponsors’, or guests’ organizations.

Family Business Audiocast™