Letter from the Cochairs

The cochairs of the 2024 Blue Ribbon Commission Report on Technology Leadership in the Boardroom: Driving Trust and Value set the stage for the report's actionable guidance.

The launch of ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, felt like a Big Bang moment, threatening to disrupt every job, business, and even industry. In 2024, Generative AI, the technology powering tools like ChatGPT, is dominating corporate and policy agendas. The emergence of this technology was not a stand-alone event, but started a new chapter in a dramatic digital revolution, propelled by profound technological innovations introduced in the past few decades, including the development of microprocessors, software, and the Internet.

This revolution is far from over, as new technology and data breakthroughs increasingly build on each other, ushering in novel and as yet unknown advancements. As one 2024 Blue Ribbon Commissioner  said, “Technology now changes everything, because it is in everything, including all of our products and services.”

What’s different today is the blistering pace of compounding, technology-driven changes that are rewriting the rules of the game—the deeply rooted underpinnings and protocols of building profitable enterprises. Joseph Schumpeter’s forces of creative destruction are supercharged, offering immense opportunity not only for (shareholder) value creation but also for value migration from incumbents to new market entrants. Technology no longer serves as a mechanical tool (albeit critical) to reengineer and optimize our business operations, but now demands that businesses reinvent themselves to remain competitive.

At the same time, our growing dependency on technologies that now affect all realms of business and daily life has also raised expectations about their responsible use. We can no longer be naively optimistic about technology as the spearhead of business growth or even human progress. Companies now have a much greater responsibility to ensure that their technologies are trustworthy. “We are not just selling digital products, we are selling trust,” one Commissioner emphasized.

This NACD Blue Ribbon Commission report is a response to this moment when companies must drive both value and trust through technology. And it does not fixate on Generative AI (the issue du jour) but offers a wider lens, looking at the opportunities and risks created by all transformative technologies and the governance required to steer companies toward long-term success in this era of exponential change.