Boards Need a New Approach to Technology
By worrying primarily about security and IT, they’re missing out on big opportunities across the sciences. by Tarun Khanna, Mary C. Beckerle and Nabil Y. Sakkab
Summary.
The boards of too many publicly traded companies are downright timid when considering matters involving science and technology. More often than not they focus on security and digitization—a defensive posture that overlooks the bigger opportunities emerging from new materials, space science, and a better understanding of the genome, to name just a few areas. It’s easy to be lulled into thinking that science doesn’t matter to a nontech company. But that distinction isn’t quite so meaningful when it comes to capitalizing on the technological change that is now ubiquitous, rapid, turbulent, and often emerging from increasingly unlikely corners.