Generation6 Academy: Turning Family Learning Into Ownership Capability
When enterprising families struggle with alignment - around ownership, governance, or long-term purpose - the issue is rarely a lack of commitment. More often, it is a lack of shared learning: a common understanding of what it means to be an owner, a steward, or a responsible decision-maker across generations.
The Generation6 Academy was created to address exactly this challenge. Our learning platform is designed to help families learn together, across time and distance, in ways that change their thinking, behavior, and decision-making.
In our experience, the most effective educational engagements:
Meet family members where they are,
build shared understanding across roles and generations,
connect learning directly to governance and strategy,
work in flexible formats that respect real lives, and
deliver impact that shows up in how families think, communicate, and decide together.
Families that learn together can turn education into capability by treating shared learning not as a one-off event but as a long-term journey. In this short article, we explain how the Generation6 Academy makes family education practical and impactful through smart learning design.
Why Family Learning Needs A New Approach
As we outlined in our earlier article on why enterprising families need intentional learning, families face increasing complexity: growing ownership groups, faster transitions, and rising expectations from next-generation members. Education is no longer a “nice to have” or something reserved for successors alone. It has become a strategic necessity.
Yet many families still rely on fragmented approaches: isolated workshops, ad-hoc retreats, or role-specific programs that rarely fully connect. The result is uneven understanding, misaligned expectations, and missed opportunities to build collective ownership competence.
What is more, enterprising families vary in terms of their educational needs, based on the family’s life stage, the size and composition of the ownership group, and the nature and complexity of the family enterprise itself. But not only that, within each family we find a wide range of abilities, interests, learning preferences, levels of engagement, and constraints related to time, geography, and access. Standardized educational efforts inevitably leave some people behind.
The Generation6 Academy is designed around this reality. Rather than asking families to adapt to a fixed program, the platform allows learning to be tailored to current and future roles and responsibilities, without sacrificing coherence or rigor. Families can engage with relevant content at the right depth, at the right moment, and in formats that work for their lives.
What the Generation6 Academy Actually Does
The Academy is a learning engine that helps families build shared understanding across roles, generations, and time, while respecting different starting points and levels of involvement. Our program is grounded in decades of advisory experience and academic research on family enterprises, adult learning, and governance. Its design reflects a simple but often overlooked insight: families do not learn best through information alone, but through structured reflection and dialogue over time.
At its core, the Academy focuses on three outcomes:
1. Learning That Fits Real Family Lives
Families are busy, geographically dispersed, and juggling multiple roles. The Academy is designed to work with this reality, not against it.
Short, focused video modules can be completed asynchronously, allowing participants to engage on their own schedule. These are complemented by facilitated group conversations, virtual or in person, where learning is translated into dialogue, reflection, and application.
The result: education that is structured, but flexible enough to be sustained over time.
2. Shared Learning That Builds Shared Language
One of the most powerful outcomes of family learning is not knowledge itself, but a common vocabulary. When family members understand governance, ownership, risk, and responsibility in similar ways, conversations change.
The Academy is designed to be used across generations and roles: active and non-active owners, next-gen members, spouses, and future stewards. Learning together helps families reduce misunderstandings, strengthen trust, and improve the quality of decision-making.
3. Education Connected To Your Own Family Enterprise Reality
Learning is most effective when it connects directly to what families are actually navigating: succession conversations, governance design, board roles, shareholder expectations, or the purpose of the family office.
The Academy can stand alone as an educational journey, or be integrated into broader Generation6 advisory engagements. In both cases, learning is anchored in the family’s lived reality, not abstract theory.
Flexible Design That Fits Your Needs
Flexibility is essential to meet each family member where they are at. The Academy combines multiple learning formats within a clearly sequenced learning journey, which prevents the familiar pattern of cramming learning into rare moments:
Virtual learning provides short, high-impact modules that fit into busy schedules, using interactive formats rather than passive webinars. Both synchronous and asynchronous options ensure that every family member can participate meaningfully.
Hybrid pathways blend virtual preparation with live or in-person engagement, allowing families to absorb concepts over time and then deepen them through facilitated dialogue and application.
In-person intensives create space for deeper relational work, shared reflection, and practice-based learning that strengthens trust and collective capacity.
Introduction to the Generation6 Academy ‘Family Dynamics’ Learning Module
Who the Academy Is For
The Generation6 Academy is the learning engine for families who aim to endure, adapt, and thrive, at different stages of their journey:
families preparing the next generation for ownership,
families renewing or professionalizing governance structures,
families seeking stronger alignment across branches or generations,
and families who want to invest proactively in long-term continuity.
In each case, the Academy serves as a shared foundation, creating alignment before tensions arise, and capability before it is urgently needed.
Start The Conversation.
The Generation6 Academy is never “off the shelf.” It is adapted to the family’s context, goals, and governance landscape. Whether used as a stand-alone learning journey or as part of a broader advisory engagement, it provides families with a structured way to learn together.
If you are exploring how education can support your family’s long-term continuity, we invite you to start a conversation with us. You can learn more about the Academy here or get in touch with Massimo Baù for an informal conversation about how it might support your family’s learning journey.