The immediately prior post lists survey results of major risks perceived by corporate CEOs and directors for this year. Below is the survey list for the next entire decade:
- Keeping up with digital technology changes.
- Succession and lack of available talent.
- Rapid technology change disrupts business models.
- New products and services disrupt business models.
- Economics conditions.
- Ease of entry of competitors threatens market share.
- Regulatory changes in how products and services are produced and delivered.
- Resistance to change.
- Changes in organizational culture (hybrid work, evolving labor markets, changed nature of work)
- Inability to use advanced data analytics.
Points to ponder (aside from substantial overlap of risk identification in this list compared with the one-year list):
What about climate change? If projections are correct, climate change is sinking cities, imperiling energy supplies, impacting food supply, moving populations, creating expanding physical disasters. The SEC demands commentary on such matters as material– are our boards asleep, or do they consider this is mere social noise?
Is there no concern of political risk? World-wide or within the US or EU? Guess not….
Technology is driving business and profit but note the number of concerns that the inherent disruption of tech is creating: factors 1,3,4,6,8 and 10 above are related to destructive risks of advanced technology. And if investment capital continues to be attracted to innovative tech, there is going to be an awful lot to new technology in the marketplace.
Finally, the list overall seems to implicate the need for a high level of attention to technological factors. Common advice to boards today continues to maintain that boards generally do not need Technology Committees, as tech is a matter for the whole board. I never understood that argument; after all, finance is a matter for the whole board but we have F&A Committees for example. What is wrong with thinking about tech from a different angle; eg a Committee asking “from what direction will the tech bullets be coming in the next decade and where will they hit the bastions of our company.”