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ARTICLE · 31 AUGUST 2017

Time To Upgrade The Board's Technology Knowledge

ICSA
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Boards need new attitudes and competencies to adapt for the digital age. For the past 30 years, technology has been considered as an operational matter, best delegated well below boardroom level.

United KingdomCorporate/Commercial Law
Stephen Page
Stephen Page

Boards need new attitudes and competencies to adapt for the digital age.

For the past 30 years, technology has been considered as an operational matter, best delegated well below boardroom level. Boards often struggled to engage meaningfully with digital and IT topics; instead, they are ‘updated’ by technical experts in an unsatisfying, disconnected way.

In a fog of technical jargon, boards cannot work out what business choices they are being asked to make. Now the world has changed and boards need to change too.

This is the digital age: society is different, business is different, and risks are different. It is time to fundamentally rethink how technology questions are addressed at board level.

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