Family-run businesses: the impact on local areas is growing

The nominees for this award fared even better, with revenues doubling over the period and their workforce increasing by 63 per cent.

Analysing these aspects, building a stable network and promoting these businesses is the aim of the ‘Ambasciatori d’Impresa’ project, which once again concluded with special mentions being awarded to 40 companies.

“In recent years,” explains Mario Corti, Senior Partner at KPMG , “despite ongoing crises, geopolitical shocks and rising energy costs, Italian family-run businesses have demonstrated remarkable resilience. They continue to grow and invest from one generation to the next, demonstrating a long-term vision and competitive ambition in global markets. Furthermore, they display a strong sense of social responsibility towards their communities. In the long term, this aspect also becomes a source of competitive advantage.”

“Family businesses,” adds Giovanni Ronca, Head of Global Wealth Management at UBS Italia, “have a natural inclination towards the long term: they create value not only through growth, but also by generating employment, innovation and development in the regions where they operate. The challenge today is to make this impact an integral part of business strategy, transforming it into a driver of competitiveness and continuity for future generations as well.”

Having analysed business innovation in the first year and subsequently the issues surrounding generational succession, the annual report accompanying the initiative has focused precisely on this: the ‘wider’ impact of these organisations within their local communities. Among the candidates, 85 per cent state that these objectives are central to their work, and almost two-thirds expect their commitment in this regard to increase next year.

The stories of the companies involved in the event at Piazza Affari, from Loacker to Rigoni di Asiago, from Antonini to Società Gas Rimini, from Masi, Oropan to Gruppo Molteni, highlight these choices, drawing on experiences and activities developed in social, environmental and local contexts, which are often not immediately linked to a direct economic return. As the research highlights, given the same initiatives, it is the organisational structure that separates the top from the bottom of the rankings: governance is the dimension with the greatest gap between the top performers and the companies at the bottom. The breadth of impact – that is, the number and scope of the various initiatives – is the factor showing the smallest gap between the top performers and the companies at the bottom. The most advanced companies also accept that impact comes at a cost: six out of ten have, at least once, foregone an economic benefit for the sake of impact, and this sacrifice is the factor that most distinguishes companies in terms of the intentionality behind this action. Furthermore, where impact is embedded in the core business, innovation and the resulting competitive advantages are more common. Although impact measurement is increasingly adopted, its use in decision-making remains limited. Six in ten companies have their results verified externally, but only 8 per cent significantly link managers’ incentives to impact. However, companies that measure impact and use this data to make decisions report significant competitive benefits in 54 per cent of cases.