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MIT Sloan School of Management is academic host of the 2022 FFI Global Conference, “Family Enterprise and the Fourth Economy: Internal and External Pressures to Change and Adapt,” with MIT and MIT Sloan faculty as conference presenters. The conference sessions will cover Changing Family Dynamics, Future of Work, Societal Trends, and Environmental Sustainability.

The MIT Museum—adjacent to Boston Marriott Cambridge—re-opens on October 2 in the recently realized Kendall Gateway to MIT. Housed in a new building in purposely-built space, the museum serves as an interface between MIT and the wider world, while offering a comfortable environment to participate in discovery and debate the issues of our times.

Galleries display highlights of past and ongoing research at MIT, objects from the museum’s vast collection, as well as investigations of a wide range of topics. The museum also features a state-of-the-art maker space and learning labs offering visitors a hands-on chance to tinker and create.

Peter Hirst, MIT Senior Associate Dean of Executive Education, and John Davis will deliver opening remarks.

Changing Family Demographics: The aging of the world’s populations and other demographic trends have profound implications for multi-generational family enterprises, advisors, and researchers. What demographic changes and changes in family dynamics and culture are clients experiencing? How can practitioners help them build family unity in this new era?

Future of Work: As digitization, AI, automation, and robotics are transforming the workplace, how will work get done over the coming years? How will work be influenced by core family enterprise concerns and considerations, such as generational and social shifts? What new skills and understandings do families and family firms need to build in this new era?

Societal Trends: During the next decade, researchers are anticipating increasing dissatisfaction in society, even in advanced economies. For the past several decades, global prosperity and standards of living have increased, while at the same time income, wealth, and education inequality have risen. As relevant economic actors in all countries, family enterprises will need to find ways to navigate the challenges, opportunities, and dilemmas that will be posed by key societal trends.

Environmental Sustainability: Societies, industries (and their supply chains), companies, and families are suffering from the destabilizing effects of climate change that include flooding and water shortages, violent weather patterns, air and water pollution, and physical risks that individuals endure from environmental degradation. Governments and others are ramping up efforts to create a sustainable economy and to limit pollution from businesses and households. Researchers are producing promising new technologies. Entrepreneurs are building significant wealth through new approaches to doing business. Can these combined efforts save us from life-altering changes? In any case, we need to understand how to guide family enterprises in this new era.

Following upon the ideas generated in the main FFI Global conference on October 27 and 28, this post-conference day will focus on the implications of the Fourth Economy for advisors and researchers in the field. Limited to 100 registrants, the day will be organized around the four segments discussed in the main conference. Attendees must be registered for the main conference to be eligible to attend.

The post-conference will feature John Davis, 2022 Conference Program Chair, and Mark Stevenson, FFI Futurenaut-in-Residence, and will be held at the MIT Samberg Conference Center.