Esther Dyson on digital advisory boards: 'Pay attention to what they say'.

Esther Dyson was there in a big way at the very beginnings of the Internet age. Ever since 1983, as chairman of her firm EDventure Holdings and author of its newsletter Release 1.0, she has been deeply engaged first as a journalist, and later as investor, advisor, and active board member for a breathtaking range of ventures. These include public and private companies, nonprofit organizations, and innovative initiatives, all typically focused on new technologies, new business models, and new markets. She was the founding chairman of ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) and is currently a board member of global marketing firm WPP Group and Russia's leading search company Yandex, among others, (Her website, www.edventure.com, has a full list of her activities.) She has a particular fondness for nurturing start-ups. Her attention right now is being given to HICCup, an initiative to foster health intervention programs in several cities (www.hiccup.com). She fielded the following questions from Directors & Boards on digital advisory boards.--James Kristie

Is a digital advisory board a good idea for a public company?

That depends. Often, you need the digital expertise or vision internally, rather than as an external add-on. But in some cases, a digital advisory board could help you get there. In others, what you really need is a couple of focus groups--whether of customers or of your own employees.

What should the board's mission be?

Again, that depends. What is the particular (digital) problem you're trying to solve? Or, to put it more nicely--what opportunities are you trying to address? Just wanting "to be more digital" is not a mission. In the end, you should be looking for how to use digital to implement a strategy, rather than digital as a strategy (unless you're talking about reaching digital companies in a B-to-B company). But in the end, all companies will be digital, just as all companies are telephone-based.

So, for example, are you trying to reach consumers more effectively? Improve your own internal communications? Add an interactive service component to a physical product or service? One great example of this is how the airline business, for all its flaws, has become far more interactive. Consumers can go online and pick their own seats, track their own bags, reschedule their flights.... Although the flying experience itself is still often disappointing, consumers have far more control and visibility into...