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Here is a selection of recent research by Cutter experts you can access immediately. As a Cutter community member, you'll have access to every new piece of research on sustainability, technology, leadership, and industry, plus all of our timeless business and technology strategy insights. This includes more than 20 years of articles from our flagship journal, Amplify (formerly Cutter Business Technology Journal.)
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Article
Boards Under Fire: Fulfilling Fiduciary Duty in an ESG Environment
Trevor Hunter
Trevor Hunter examines how leader character strengthens board decision-making. As ESG considerations and the UN’s Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI) reshape board responsibilities, directors are now accountable to a broader set of stakeholders beyond shareholders. Hunter draws on the Leader Character Framework developed by Mary Crossan, Gerard Seijts, and Jeffrey Gandz of Canada’s Ivey Business School, highlighting its role in navigating complex — and sometimes conflicting — obligations.
Article
Overconfident CEOs: Simplifying Firms & Ignoring Risks
Shuhui Wang, Hirindu Kawshala
Shuhui Wang and Hirindu Kawshala analyze more than 14,000 earnings call transcripts to examine how CEO overconfidence impacts firm complexity. They find that overconfident CEOs tend to reduce complexity, often at the cost of long-term alignment, as illustrated by John Flannery’s short tenure at General Electric. Their study underscores the importance of aligning CEO traits with a firm’s strategic and operational needs, particularly during leadership transitions. Boards must discern whether simplification efforts reflect sound strategy or risky overconfidence.
Article
Institutionalizing Board Knowledge
Siah Hwee Ang
Siah Hwee Ang calls for a shift in how executives engage with boards — not just as monitors or advisers but as long-term strategic assets. He advocates for structures that tap into directors’ expertise through agenda setting, follow-ups, and subcommittees. Boards’ hard skills can be institutionalized via staggered succession, while soft skills can be preserved by documenting decision-making processes. Regular engagement is key, with boards contributing to short-, medium-, and long-term strategic discussions.
Article
Innovation Starts in the Boardroom & Committees Are Where It Comes to Life
Filip Lestan, Ruy de Quadros Carvalho
Filip Lestan and Ruy de Quadros Carvalho analyze 249 Brazilian firms to assess how board structure influences innovation governance. They found that forming innovation-related committees is far more impactful than vision statements or rhetoric, enabling boards to ask better questions and oversee complex initiatives. Larger boards are more likely to form such committees, while CEO duality and director busyness significantly reduce the likelihood. The article concludes with four actionable steps to strengthen innovation governance through board design.
Article
How AI Could Reshape the Boardroom
David Larcker, Amit Seru, Brian Tayan, Laurie Yoler
David F. Larcker, Amit Seru, Brian Tayan, and Laurie Yoler explore how AI could reshape boardrooms by enhancing the volume, quality, and timeliness of information available to directors. AI can reduce information asymmetry, support predictive analysis, and enable real-time scenario planning. These tools help boards become more proactive and better prepared for meetings. However, the authors caution that greater access to information may blur the line between governance and operations, requiring executives to manage directors’ deeper involvement carefully.
Article
Corporate Boards: Navigating Decision-Making & Priorities in Complex Times — Opening Statement
Mirko Benischke
This issue of Amplify invites a reexamination of what makes boards truly effective. It features a collection of articles that explore how boards can evolve beyond conventional roles to become active stewards of long-term value — drawing on leader character, data and analytics, behavioral insight, structural design, and strategic engagement.
Article
When Are Lead Independent Directors Essential & When Are They Not?
Alessia Falsarone
Alessia Falsarone examines the evolving role of lead independent directors (LIDs), offering a five-part framework to assess when and how to appoint them. Although LIDs can strengthen board independence and communication, their function varies by context. In firms where the CEO also chairs the board, LIDs often serve as a bridge to management and stakeholders. In other cases, they foster open dialogue on issues like ESG and AI ethics. Falsarone illustrates this with examples, including Coca-Cola’s LID leading efforts in transparency and sustainability amid activist pressure.
Advisor
CEO Insights 2025: Unlocking AI’s Full Potential Requires Strategic Commitment
Francesco Marsella, Ralf Baron, Petter Kilefors, Maximilian Scherr
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.
Advisor
Leadership That Measures What Matters
Christian Busch, Nele Marie Terveen
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.
Advisor
CEO Insights 2025: Turning ESG Pressure into Strategic Advantage
Francesco Marsella, Ralf Baron, Petter Kilefors, Maximilian Scherr
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.
Advisor
Next-Gen Business Power: Unleashing Quantum-AI Potential
Joseph Byrum
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.
Advisor
CEO Insights 2025: 5 Imperatives & 7 Growth Bets for Future-Ready Leadership
Francesco Marsella, Ralf Baron, Petter Kilefors, Maximilian Scherr
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.
Advisor
Turning the Tide on Space Junk with Orbital Stewardship
Curt Hall
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.
Advisor
9 Traps That Derail Purpose-Driven Transformation
Dee Corrigan, Lauren Elliott, Gethin Hine, James McCarthy
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.
Advisor
Implementing a Predictive Twin for Positive-Energy Districts: Lessons Learned
Angela Greco, Andrea Kerstens
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.
Advisor
Embedding Sustainability into Strategy Execution
Matt Mayberry, Scott Tew, Laura Asiala
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.
Advisor
Why AI Projects Fail — and How to Make Them Succeed
San Murugesan
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.
Advisor
Toward a Virtue-Based Vision of Professional Purpose & Responsibility
Ananthi Al Ramiah, Gretchen Reydams Schils, Matthew Phillips
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.
Advisor
AI Takes Orbit: Transforming Satellite Data into Environmental Action
Curt Hall
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.
Article
Quantum Software Engineering: Past, Present & Future
Giuseppe Bisicchia, Jose Garcia-Alonso, Juan Murillo, Antonio Brogi
Giuseppe Bisicchia, José Garcia-Alonso, Juan Murillo, and Antonio Brogi lay the historical and theoretical groundwork for understanding quantum software engineering (QSE) as a discipline, tracing its origins to Richard Feynman’s call for quantum simulation and following the evolution of quantum algorithms from Peter Shor’s and Lov Grover’s breakthroughs to today’s hybrid implementations. The article argues that QSE must strike a balance between importing proven classical software engineering practices and cultivating quantum-specific innovations.