Most organizations underutilize their boards, treating directors primarily as oversight agents rather than strategic partners. This Advisor recommends a shift toward deeper, ongoing engagement between directors and management to unlock the full value of board expertise. By institutionalizing both hard and soft skills — through regular interaction, strategic involvement, and better succession planning — organizations can ensure board knowledge becomes a lasting asset, not a transient one.

As biodiversity loss intensifies, companies face mounting pressure to integrate nature positive actions into their sustainability strategies. This Advisor explores how businesses can operationalize these efforts by leveraging established tools and frameworks to assess nature-related risks and opportunities. It also highlights the importance of third-party verification to avoid greenwashing and ensure meaningful outcomes.

This Advisor explores the accelerating convergence of academic research and industry investment in quantum algorithms, marking a shift from theoretical promise to practical application. From simulating molecules in drug discovery to optimizing logistics and advancing financial modeling, quantum algorithms are beginning to deliver domain-specific value. As industries invest in identifying where quantum advantage matters most, the focus is turning to integrating these tools into real-world workflows and architectures.

This Advisor explores how CEO overconfidence influences firm complexity, drawing on analysis of over 14,000 earnings call transcripts. While confident leaders may aim to streamline operations, the findings show a 3.1% reduction in complexity among firms led by overconfident CEOs — raising concerns about oversimplification. Boards and investors should carefully evaluate whether reduced complexity reflects strategic clarity or signals deeper organizational blind spots.

This Advisor explores how campuses and peri-urban communities can become powerful agents of climate action by implementing decarbonization strategies within a broader framework developed by Duke Farms. By integrating emissions reductions with biodiversity and carbon-sequestration goals, it highlights scalable, place-based solutions that address the urgent need for local action in the face of global environmental threats.

This Advisor explores how cybersecurity vendors are harnessing AI to detect and counter increasingly sophisticated deepfakes. It examines emerging capabilities such as multimodal detection engines, real-time threat mitigation, forensic analysis, and behavioral biometrics — technologies designed to safeguard organizations against fraud, impersonation, and synthetic media manipulation.

AI’s rapid adoption offers transformative potential but also introduces significant risks — some with potentially irreversible consequences. This Advisor highlights the importance of strategic leadership in managing these risks through integrated business, AI, and organizational strategies. It underscores the need for human oversight in critical systems, structured AI risk management frameworks, and a commitment to responsible development.

This Advisor introduces the Sustainability Canvas, a strategic framework designed to help CSOs and business leaders develop integrated, long-term sustainability programs. Anchored by four compass points — internal versus external focus and private markets versus the public square — the Canvas identifies key areas of sustainability action across compliance, efficiency, innovation, and community engagement. By linking activities across these quadrants, organizations can unlock synergies that drive economic, social, and strategic value.

Many organizations are stuck in pilot mode, using AI for incremental gains rather than transformative impact. This Advisor, based on ADL’s recent CEO Insights study, calls for a shift toward enterprise-wide adoption, strategic alignment, and long-term vision to fully capture AI’s disruptive potential and stay ahead of emerging competitors.

As organizations pursue purpose-driven goals, true leadership requires more than bold statements — it demands rigorous measurement of real-world impact. This means shifting from tracking inputs to evaluating tangible outcomes, acknowledging unintended consequences, and staying adaptable in the face of uncertainty. As this Advisor explores, effective leaders build systems that capture both direct and ripple effects of their actions, enabling smarter decisions and more resilient strategies.

In the face of growing scrutiny and shifting expectations around ESG, this Advisor provides CEOs with a focused roadmap to enhance the strategic value of their ESG initiatives. Drawing from ADL’s recent CEO Insights study, it outlines four key actions and highlights three opportunity areas where businesses can drive both impact and performance.

The convergence of quantum computing and AI marks a transformative leap for business, redefining how organizations process information, generate insights, and innovate. This fusion unlocks scalable efficiency, sustainable computing, and advanced analytics — enabling real-time decision-making, deeper customer understanding, and accelerated R&D. As these technologies mature, they promise to reshape business capabilities across industries.

Arthur D. Little’s 2025 CEO Insights study, “Proactively Embracing Change,” reveals that today’s CEOs are confidently navigating geopolitical and economic volatility through bold, proactive strategies. The first in a series of insights, this Advisor explores five strategic imperatives and identifies seven growth areas CEOs are prioritizing, such as institutionalized innovation, ecosystem collaboration, and agile M&A strategies. The study underscores the need for CEOs to transform uncertainty into opportunity by embedding agility, resilience, and forward-thinking into their organizations.

This Advisor explores the growing urgency of removing space debris to safeguard Earth’s orbital environment and ensure the sustainability of future missions. With thousands of defunct satellites and fragments threatening operational spacecraft and essential Earth-based services, debris removal is increasingly viewed as critical infrastructure — akin to ocean cleanup. While promising technologies and international guidelines are emerging, challenges such as voluntary compliance, regulatory gaps, and security concerns persist.

In today’s business landscape, purpose is essential — not a side note. Yet, many purpose-driven efforts lose momentum due to common behavioral pitfalls. Drawing from the Purpose-in-Practice Community, this Advisor identifies nine traps that undermine lasting, transformative change. Avoiding these traps can help leaders embed purpose more meaningfully and sustainably across their organizations.

This Advisor distills key lessons from the Syn.ikia project’s implementation of digital twins in Uden, the Netherlands—an EU-funded initiative focused on positive-energy districts. It explores how predictive digital twins, combining building simulations with AI-driven user behavior models, can optimize renewable energy use. It also emphasizes the importance of ethical data management, user empowerment through intuitive design, and value chain collaboration to ensure digital twins enhance sustainability without alienating end users.

Achieving bold sustainability commitments requires a fundamental shift in strategy, guided by a cascade of choices from aspiration to execution. This Advisor outlines a four-phase model — aspirations, strategy, chartering, and execution — and emphasizes the importance of connecting high-level sustainability goals to operational realities. Without clear translation across levels, initiatives risk stalling. Effective transformation demands active engagement throughout the organization to embed sustainability into strategic decision-making and drive lasting value.

Despite AI’s transformative potential, over 80% of AI projects fail — double the rate of traditional IT initiatives. As this Advisor points out, key pitfalls include unclear objectives, poor data quality, inadequate infrastructure, and misaligned expectations. To reverse this trend, organizations must align AI capabilities with real-world needs, invest in robust systems, and build multidisciplinary expertise. Establishing clear metrics and knowing when to pause or pivot projects are also critical for long-term success.

This Advisor argues that professional ethics education must go beyond rules and codes of conduct to truly prepare individuals for the complex, high-stakes challenges of modern professional life. It advocates for a virtue ethics approach — rooted in purpose, character, and moral reasoning — as essential to shaping a resilient, reflective, and ethically grounded professional identity. Drawing on Stoic philosophy, the article emphasizes the importance of joy, fulfillment (eudaimonia), and the cardinal virtues as guiding principles for meaningful and ethical professional practice.

As Cutter Expert Curt Hall explores in this Advisor, AI is revolutionizing satellite data analysis for environmental applications by enabling faster, more precise, and accessible insights. GenAI streamlines data interpretation and broadens access through natural language queries, while in-space AI processing accelerates real-time analysis by eliminating the need to transmit data to Earth. Together, these advancements empower more responsive environmental monitoring, climate action, and sustainable resource management.

As Cutter Expert Curt Hall explores, AI is transforming legal systems worldwide, from AI-powered “smart judges” in China’s virtual courts to the UAE’s ambitious regulatory intelligence ecosystem designed to streamline lawmaking. These technologies promise greater efficiency, accessibility, and responsiveness in legal processes. However, they also raise critical concerns around bias, transparency, accountability, and overdependence on automation — highlighting the need for ethical frameworks and strong human oversight to ensure justice remains fair and grounded.

Great communicators and leaders distinguish themselves by mastering the art and science of asking powerful questions — of others and themselves. Clear, purposeful questions foster trust, drive innovation, and reveal hidden insights, while empathetic, well-timed inquiry builds psychological safety and emotional intelligence. Combining strategic questioning with strong interpersonal skills transforms conversations, strengthens relationships, and accelerates learning and impact.

Arthur D. Little’s three-step framework can help guide healthcare organizations toward environmental sustainability. Beginning with foundational green practices like energy efficiency and waste management, the approach then integrates broader operational initiatives such as telemedicine and clinical redesign. Finally, it addresses systemic enablers — including eco-conscious procurement, R&D innovation, and physician education — to embed sustainability across the healthcare value chain and reduce emissions at all levels.

Legacy data management practices, where insights are delayed and decisions rely on instinct, are no longer sufficient in today's fast-paced business environment. To stay competitive, organizations must decentralize decision-making and ensure frictionless, timely access to data for all employees. As this Advisor explores, a strategic, tailored approach to data recency and accessibility will define future-ready enterprises.

New global research from over 2,100 leaders reveals a critical execution gap — “digital detachment” — where senior leadership overestimates progress while failing to align culture, data use, and customer-centricity. Although many leaders express confidence and progress is evident, transformation efforts falter without a shared purpose, cultural alignment, and effective data-driven decision-making. The Advisor underscores the urgent need for leaders to shift from acknowledging challenges to taking decisive action that embeds transformation into the organization’s DNA.