'One excellent and growing trend'.

• Position: EDITOR'S NOTE - Editorial

WE TRY to maintain a supply of back issues of DIRECTORS & BOARDS for continuing single-copy sales, hut every once in a while we have a sellout issue. The first quarter issue of 2013--with the cover story devoted to: "Recruiting the Digital Director"--was one of our sellouts. For that issue we had asked a number of authors, including digital directors and those recruiting them, to offer guidance to boards who might be thinking about or getting ready to pull the trigger on adding a I member of the digerati to their board.

The response to that issue indicated a voracious interest in this aspect of board recruitment. So, we return to this topic, only this time with a twist. In this edition's cover story we look at "Creating a Digital Advisory Board." The rationale underpinning this lead piece is well stated by one of our authors, Susan Stautberg (page 25): "Corporate directors and senior executives often do not want to allocate a valuable board seat to a digital/ IT expert, who is often in his or her 20s or 30s and without financial, management, or regulatory expertise. Instead, they are creating technology, or digital, advisory boards."

The seed for this cover story was actually planted in the year-ago "Digital Director" issue. That's when George L. Davis Jr. and Jennifer Monroe of Egon Zehnder's Board Practice included in their recommendations on recruiting digital expertise to the board the option of forming a digital advisory board. At that time they called it "one excellent and growing trend." Naturally they were the first ones I reconnected with to have them do a fuller brief on a digital advisory board, and you will see their excellent analysis on page 24.

Kicking off the special coverage of digital advisory boards is Barry Libert. He might not call himself a preeminent...