The Growing Need for Tech-Savvy NEDs in Non-Tech Companies

By Adrian Lawrence FCA, founder of NED Capital · Part of the Board Governance Hub

It is easy to assume that technology on the board is a concern for technology businesses, and that a traditional company — one that makes things, sells things or provides professional services — can leave it to the specialists. That assumption is increasingly unsafe, and closing the gap it leaves is one of the more common board-composition questions of the moment. This article looks at why non-tech companies now need technology understanding at board level, what “tech-savvy” should and should not mean, and how to get the balance right.

Why Non-Tech Companies Now Face Technology as a Board Issue

The starting point is a simple observation with far-reaching consequences: the line between “tech companies” and everyone else has largely dissolved. A business does not have to sell software to be deeply dependent on technology, and most are. Operations run on digital systems; customers are reached and served through digital channels; decisions increasingly rest on data; and a great deal of value — and risk — now sits in the company’s technology and the third parties it relies on. For a traditional company, this brings the same board-level questions that a technology firm has always faced: is our digital strategy sound and are we investing wisely in it; are we exposed to cyber and data risks we do not fully understand; is technology creating opportunities we are failing to grasp, or threats from more digitally capable competitors that we are failing to see? These are not operational details to be left entirely to management; they bear directly on strategy, on risk and on the company’s long-term prospects, which places them squarely within the board’s remit. And here is the difficulty: a board composed entirely of people with no real technology understanding cannot oversee any of this well. It may not know which questions to ask, may struggle to judge whether management’s answers are reassuring or merely reassuring-sounding, and may find itself dependent on the very executives it is meant to be holding to account. That blind spot — a board unable to exercise informed oversight over a significant area of strategy and risk — is precisely what the growing demand for tech-savvy non-executives is a response to. The point is not that technology is fashionable; it is that oversight of it has become part of the board’s core job even in businesses that do not think of themselves as technological.

What “Tech-Savvy” Should Mean — Oversight, Not a Technologist

Here is where many boards get the response wrong, and it is worth being precise about it. Recognising a technology gap, a board’s instinct is often to “hire a tech person” — to parachute a chief technology officer or a career technologist onto the board on the assumption that deep technical expertise is what is required. That instinct misframes the need. A non-executive is not there to run the company’s technology, build its digital strategy, choose its systems or lead its transformation; all of that is the executive team’s work, and a non-executive who tried to do it would be overstepping the role. What the board needs is someone who can oversee technology with genuine understanding — and the model for this already exists in every well-run boardroom. Consider finance: a board does not require every non-executive to be an accountant, but it does need enough financial literacy, usually concentrated in an audit committee, to interrogate the numbers, challenge the finance director and know when an answer does not add up. Technology oversight works the same way. The valuable tech-savvy non-executive is one who understands technology well enough to ask sharp questions about the digital strategy, to probe whether cyber and data risks are genuinely under control, to test whether a major technology investment is justified, and to tell the difference between real progress and confident presentation — without ever needing to be the person who could build the system themselves. This reframing matters enormously in practice, because it changes what the board should look for: not the deepest technical expert available, but a director with sufficient literacy and, just as importantly, the board-level judgment and independence to use it as oversight rather than to drift into doing management’s job. The same oversight-not-execution discipline that defines the whole non-executive role, set out in the role of non-executive directors in corporate risk management, applies with particular force here.

Getting It Right: Literacy, Balance and the Whole Board

If the goal is oversight capability rather than a resident technologist, several practical implications follow. The first is that raising the board’s technology literacy is often better achieved across the whole board than concentrated in a single appointment. A lone technology specialist can, paradoxically, weaken oversight rather than strengthen it if the rest of the board defers to them on anything technological and stops engaging — the very deference that good oversight is meant to avoid. A board where several members are reasonably technology-literate, even without deep expertise, will often challenge better than one that has outsourced all its thinking to a single expert; briefings, education and a deliberate lift in the collective baseline can matter as much as any one hire. The second is that where a specific appointment is the answer, it should be scoped honestly against what the board actually lacks — which is where a proper skills audit earns its place, mapping the board’s existing capabilities against the technology oversight the company genuinely needs, so the search targets the real gap rather than a vague sense that the board should be “more digital”. This is set out in how to conduct a board skills audit before hiring a NED. The third is balance: technology literacy is one competency among several a board needs, and it should be added without crowding out the financial, commercial, sector and governance experience that remain essential; the aim is a well-rounded board that can oversee technology, not a board that has swung so far towards technology that it neglects everything else. Two areas deserve particular attention within this, because they are where the board-level stakes are highest: cyber risk, discussed in why boards now demand NEDs with cyber risk expertise, and the oversight of artificial intelligence, discussed in boardroom AI: are NEDs ready to oversee tech ethics and strategy. Get these things right — oversight not execution, whole-board literacy not a single specialist, honest balance not fashion — and a non-tech company gains exactly what it needs: a board able to see clearly in an area where, not long ago, it might have been flying blind. At NED Capital we help boards do precisely this, including through our technology non-executive recruitment practice, and every search is led personally by Adrian Lawrence FCA, a Fellow of the ICAEW and former listed-company finance director.

NED Capital | Sister practice of FD Capital | ICAEW practising certificate held by Adrian Lawrence FCA.

Adrian Lawrence

Adrian Lawrence FCA is the founder of NED Capital and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) and holds an ICAEW practising certificate in his own name. He holds a BSc from Queen Mary College, University of London, and has over 25 years of experience working with boards, investors and business owners across the UK. He founded NED Capital to connect businesses with the independent Non-Executive Directors they need to provide challenge, governance and strategic oversight — and personally leads candidate assessments for board-level appointments.