As a former board member of banks and tech companies, I noticed some tricks that are used to influence or block decisions – or to ensure smooth and unanimous approvals. What are my colleagues' educational backgrounds and interests? Who gets tired faster from long debates and prefers a quick vote? Is a board member a retired position or a true decision maker?
If you understand the typical portrait of a board member, you can not only identify who manages large companies and how they do it but also predict and navigate them.
We analyzed 222 CVs of board members from the top 20 global tech companies by market capitalization, including such tech elephants as Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon. The average number of board members is 11, ranging from 7 at Palantir to 24 at SAP. Who are these people?
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Age. The average director is 61.5 years old, with half of all directors between their mid-fifties and late sixties. The youngest is 37, the oldest is 87. Palantir and Meta have younger boards, with average ages around the late 40s to about 50. Oracle, TSMC, and Apple have much older boards, with average ages near or above 70.
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Gender. Boards are predominantly male. Women hold about 30% of all seats. Company-level differences are significant: some boards are nearly balanced, while others still have roughly one woman for every four directors.
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Education level. Over 70% of directors hold a postgraduate degree, such as a master’s degree, MBA, or doctorate. The most common degree is a PhD, at 30%. Doctoral degrees are prevalent in Asian firms with a strong focus on semiconductors, where most directors are doctors. About 25% of directors have an MBA,18% hold a master’s degree. Only 22% of directors have a Bachelor of Arts degree.
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Education background. About two-thirds of directors studied economics, business, engineering, computer science, or other scientific and medical disciplines. Law and the humanities made up a much smaller portion.
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University. The universities associated with these credentials are highly concentrated. Stanford appears 23 times in the dataset, Harvard appears 19 times, the various campuses of the University of California appear 16 times, the University of Pennsylvania appears 8 times; MIT, the University of Chicago appear 6 times each. These six universities make up roughly a third of all directors.
Typically, a board member is a male, just over 60 (not retired), graduated from a top US university in a quantitative field,holds a doctoral degree. His standard traits: an overvalued analytical approach, perfectionism, a logic-driven, better-do-myself, old-school management style. Subordinates, secretaries, assistants can often find ways to wrap up the decision for him.
Who can oppose that? Maybe AI. Some companies in Australia, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, and the UAE already use AI as a board member or board observer. Let’s try it.
