Five priorities for private businesses to focus on in 2025

By Dr. Peter Bartels, Global Entrepreneurial & Private Business Leader, PwC Germany

For 28 years, PwC’s Global CEO Survey (PDF)Opens in a new window (file size: 9.7 MB) has taken the pulse of CEOs globally – including those leading private business. Every time, it provides us with a unique snapshot of their current priorities and what will be their top focus areas for the year ahead. In 2025, for the first time, over 60% of the respondents are CEOs of private businesses.

While the focus areas evolve every year, some consistent themes apply – namely technology, sustainability, and people. Five years ago we started using this data to create our own recommendations about what private business leaders should focus on in the coming year. So, as we embark on 2025, what issues does our research suggest are set to top the agenda for private businesses?

Overarching theme: preservation & reinvention of business models

To set the scene, in my view, the overarching theme is the need to preserve and reinvent the business model for future resilience. Now is the time for private business leaders to undertake planning and actions to secure the resilience of their company for the potentially turbulent times ahead. Times that look set to be characterised by change and uncertainty in many dimensions – economic, geopolitical, commercial, technological, regulatory and more.

At a high level, private business CEOs are as optimistic, and on some measures more optimistic, than their listed company counterparts. Their expectations for revenue growth and the future viability of their company are generally similar to those voiced by listed company CEOs. But 53% of private companies say they’ve increased their market share in the past five years, while just 46% of public company CEOs say the same.

But this confidence among private business leaders raises a challenging and even provocative question. Are they right to be confident? Or are they suffering from a blind-spot and underestimating the risks they face? While the answer will vary between businesses, some of our findings point to five issues to address.

1. Implement advanced AI integration

Building on the momentum of their strong adoption of GenAI to date, private businesses now need to focus on amplifying the resulting benefits – by actively capitalising on advanced AI technologies to enhance their operations, customer experiences, and decision-making. The first step can be to launch an “early days” GenAI strategy with clear leadership accountability and backing for developing value-adding GenAI use cases.

The good news is that when it comes to realising the full potential of GenAI, private businesses have a number of advantages. One is that their shorter reporting-lines and more flexible, less bureaucratic decision-making processes compared to listed companies mean they can move faster to seize opportunities offered by GenAI. Another is that they can readily call on digital-native NextGen family members to lead the effort. In our NextGen Survey 2024, an overwhelming 73% of NextGens said they believe GenAI is a powerful force for transformation.

However, the same study underlined the risks to effective use of GenAI, with many NextGens questioning the ability of their family business to capitalise on it. The challenges may include convincing NowGen family members of the business case for investment, and then ringfencing and allocating the capital to enable it. Given the pace of GenAI’s advance, what’s clear is that companies that hang back now risk being left behind – and facing a struggle to catch up.

2. Embed sustainability and climate innovation

Our CEO Survey findings suggest that, up to now, private businesses have focused primarily on compliance with sustainability regulations, and are currently lagging behind their listed counterparts in creating new, more sustainable business models – which is the next step beyond compliance. They’ve also seen a decline in recent years in the trust premium they’ve traditionally enjoyed over listed companies, a trend highlighted by PwC research. All of this reinforces the need for private businesses to accelerate their sustainability efforts, not only by continuing to reduce their carbon footprints but also by investing in innovative climate technologies and sustainable business models.

Again, private business are well positioned to take these steps. Their core family values, keen awareness of societal impacts (especially among NextGens) and agile decision-making can enable them to scale up their sustainability efforts at a higher pace than other types of business. Key to this is seeing climate initiatives as an opportunity to build trust and value, and as a business enabler rather than a cost. The risks of failing to act on sustainability and climate are equally clear, with a growing threat of fines or other sanctions as environmental regulation expands, and a danger of further losing trust among suppliers, business partners, talent, customers and providers of capital.

3. Agile workforce development

To cope with changing market demands and technological advancements, it’s vital that private businesses evolve their strategic workforce planning to create agile, adaptable workforces that can respond at pace to change in multiple dimensions. This is especially vital at a time when GenAI is transforming the world of work: our recent joint study with the World Economic Forum (PDF)Opens in a new window (file size: 4.6 MB) says GenAI advancements are set to reshape a substantial number of jobs, potentially affecting up to 40% of total global working hours.

Evolving the workforce for this new world clearly brings challenges – but it also offers opportunities that private businesses are well-placed to seize. In our latest Global Workforce Hopes and Fears Survey, 80% of employees in family-owned/private businesses (versus 76% for other business) said they feel ready to adapt to new ways of working. But they also voiced higher levels of concern about their job security (53% versus 44%). As such findings underline, the opportunity for family and private businesses is to capitalise on their close engagement with their employees to take their people with them on the transformation journey. The risk lies in failing to do this – and losing out on the agility and access to top talent that will be so vital in the years to come.

4. Cybersecurity and data privacy

As digital transformation continues, maintaining robust cybersecurity measures and ensuring data privacy is crucial to protecting business operations and sensitive customer information. In fact, this becoming more important all the time – as underlined by the rising scale and sophistication of all types of cyberattack, including by an increasing number of state-backed actors. 

By targeting the right levels of investment at the right measures, private businesses have the opportunity to protect themselves as effectively as even the biggest listed corporation. Again, input from tech-savvy NextGen family members can be especially valuable when it comes to aligning technology investments with threats to resilience. But there are also risks – not least allocating sufficient investment from scarce resources. Also, some family members may be early adopters of leading-edge technologies ⎯ including connected devices ⎯ that may not yet have robust protections built in. All of this means the overall approach to cybersecurity needs to be proactive rather than reactive, particularly as with high profile families cyber risks can be combined with risks around personal safety. The key being to understand and manage the risk before the need arises. Read our article on 5 cyber security issues that private businesses should address now for more information. 

5. Family capital

The rising role and importance of ‘family capital’ is a powerful global trend that spans the whole ecosystem of private and family-owned businesses, family-controlled public companies, and family offices. In essence, family capital is an emerging term phenomenon that refers to the full array of holdings and investments made through a family business, family office or private wealth. In the coming years family capital is set to have a major impact on the global investment and deals landscape. 

In fact, the scale and reach of family capital is mind-boggling. Today, 2,781 global billionaires control US$14.2 trillion in wealth, surpassing for the first time the assets under management (AUM) of the private equity and venture capital industries. As PwC’s recent Family Office Deals Study reports, family offices are already major players in funding innovation globally, being responsible for at least 31% of investments in start-ups, with GenAI one of the fastest-growing areas.

Family capital generally comes into the investment and deals markets in one of two ways. The first is when the success of a private or family business enables the owners to allocate capital to a family office to diversify their risks and opportunities. The second is when family owners decide they are no longer the right entrepreneurs to run the business, and opt to crystallise their family wealth by conducting a full or partial sale. In each case, the private business has already rethought or will have to rethink its business model, potentially including collaborating with PE investors, and the capital enters the market as fuel for deals. It’s a trend – and an opportunity – that every private and family-owned business should be aware of. 

Staying ahead

Private businesses are entering 2025 with many inherent strengths still intact – together offering them great opportunities to lead their industries and continue to generate rising value and wealth. But they’ll only succeed in doing this if they recognise and address the evolving array of risks they face.