SME Succession in Germany, Meet the Next Generation – Inside HHL’s “NextGen Mittelstand” Consulting Project

Every year, tens of thousands of German business owners face the same question: who takes over when I’m gone? Over 186,000 companies across the country are currently handover-ready, making SME succession one of Germany’s most pressing economic challenges and the answer isn’t always obvious. NextGen Mittelstand is a student consulting project run within HHL’s Full-time Master programs, giving students the chance to work on a live business problem for a real client instead of a case study.

This year, Leo Humpf and his project team spent the past months tackling exactly that question — working directly with Sparkasse Leipzig on a field project examining SME succession readiness. Discover how a group of Master students turned that question into a 57-response study and a set of real recommendations.

The SME Succession Challenge in Germany

The team focused their project on business succession in German SMEs, with a particular emphasis on Saxony. Their goal, as Leo puts it, was “to better understand the key challenges, success factors, and decision-making processes involved in transferring a business to a successor.”

The stakes go beyond any one company. Business succession planning is essential not just for individual firms but for the wider Mittelstand economy. ‘Successful succession is essential for preserving businesses, safeguarding jobs, and ensuring the long-term competitiveness of regional economies,’ Leo says. Get it wrong, and the fallout isn’t abstract — viable companies close and jobs disappear, with consequences that ripple into the next generation.

More Than a University Assignment

It didn’t take long for the project to outgrow its status as coursework. “From the outset, it was clear that the project addressed one of the most pressing challenges facing Germany’s economy,” Leo explains. Working with project supervisor Prof. Dr. Alexander Lahmann, the team set out to understand the real impact — good and bad — that succession has on companies, employees, and everyone around them.

Research Methodology: Studying SME Succession in Saxony

The team’s process started with groundwork, not assumptions — extensive research into the drivers and challenges shaping SME succession. From there, they built a survey tailored specifically to the topic and pushed it out through newsletters, networks, and events, then combed the responses for recurring patterns. To add depth to those numbers, they followed up with in-depth interviews, using them to explore specific topics further, gather additional perspectives, and test the hypotheses the survey had raised.

The two methods played distinct roles. “The survey served as the foundation for gathering broad insights into the current state of SME succession,” Leo says, “while the interviews provided valuable qualitative depth — they helped us understand the reasoning behind certain responses and test the hypotheses that emerged from the survey analysis.” Together, the two gave the team a comprehensive view of the succession landscape, quantitative and qualitative at once.

From Findings to Recommendations

Turning research into something usable meant thinking in terms of the people who’d act on it. “One of the central findings was that each stakeholder group — business owners, advisors, financial institutions, public organizations — plays a distinct role in the succession process,” Leo explains. “Effective recommendations need to be tailored to the specific needs and responsibilities of each group.”

That’s also where the project felt most real. Leo points to the moment the team consolidated its survey results and derived its key findings and hypotheses: “Clear patterns began to emerge, revealing the challenges and priorities that business owners face during succession. This made the practical relevance and potential impact of our work especially tangible.”

Lessons Learned

No project runs without friction, and this one was no exception. “The greatest challenge was generating sufficient participation in the survey during the initial phase,” Leo says — the questionnaire was intentionally thorough, which meant asking real time from respondents, on top of a tight project timeline. Proactive project management, strong team collaboration, and steady support from their professor got the team through it.

What Leo takes from the experience goes beyond the succession research itself. Alongside sharper survey design and data analysis skills, he points to something less technical: “One of my key takeaways was the importance of actively steering both the project and the team. Clear ownership, effective communication, and continuous alignment are essential for delivering high-quality results” — capabilities, he adds, that are just as relevant in consulting as they are in business more broadly.

Key Takeaways

• SME succession in Germany affects hundreds of thousands of businesses  and the decision-making behind it is more fragmented than it looks from the outside

• Combining a broad survey with in-depth interviews gave the team both the scale and the nuance to build credible recommendations

• Good recommendations aren’t generic — they’re built stakeholder by stakeholder

• The project sharpened skills — research design, team leadership, translating data into action — that carry directly into consulting careers