AI Opportunities for Boards: Is Your Board Ready to Recognise Them?
AI is creating new business opportunities across markets, customer experience, business models and operations. Explore how boards can identify AI opportunities, assess their strategic value and turn AI investments into sustainable competitive advantage.
BOARD INSIGHTS
12/9/20261 min read
AI Is Creating Opportunities. Is Your Board Ready to Recognise Them?
AI is moving from experimentation to business strategy.
After spending more than three decades working across technology and digital transformation, I have seen this pattern before: when a new technology emerges, organisations often focus first on what the technology can do—and only later ask where it can create business value.
AI is not just another technology upgrade—it can change how a business competes, creates value and makes decisions.
For Boards, the question is not only “What could go wrong?”, It is also “Where could AI fundamentally improve the business?”
The opportunity could be a new business model, a better customer experience, a more efficient operation—or even a completely different way of competing.
And the scale of investment shows why Boards need to pay attention:
- 85% of organisations increased their AI investment in the past 12 months.
- 91% plan to increase their AI investment again this year.
- 91% organisations plan to increase AI investment again this year.
Ref: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2026-ai-index-report/economy
https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/what-we-do/capabilities/ai/research/ai-roi-the-paradox-of-rising-investment-and-elusive-returns.html
This is where Board judgement matters.
- Is this a genuine business opportunity or simply an interesting AI use case?
- Does it strengthen our strategy or distract from it?
- What data, technology and people dependencies does it create?
- How will we know whether the investment is actually delivering value?
My experience in technology governance, cybersecurity, data privacy and now responsible AI has reinforced one point for me: innovation and governance should not sit on opposite sides of the table.
Good governance should help the Board understand where to take calculated risks, where to ask deeper questions and where to invest with confidence.
The Boardroom Question
Is your Board looking at AI as another technology risk—or as a strategic opportunity that could change how the business competes?