Governing in the Age of AI and Sustainability: A New Book Edition for a New Era
Our updated book AI Leadership for Boards – Enabling Responsible AI for Sustainable Value Creation will be published by Springer in November 2025.
The seeds of this book were planted in 2018, at a time when artificial intelligence was just beginning to enter boardrooms—and “responsible AI” was still a fringe topic. Since then, we have witnessed an exponential acceleration of both AI capabilities and sustainability challenges. Today, board directors are increasingly expected to guide companies through a future shaped by both technological disruption and planetary risk.
This new edition is a response to that convergence.
It Began With a Simple Question
In 2018, with the support of Vinnova – Sweden’s Innovation Agency, our interdisciplinary team—led by Chalmers University of Technology, Digoshen, and Next Agents—set out to explore a deceptively simple question:
How should boards govern exponential technologies—particularly AI—in a way that enables innovation and sustainability to reinforce rather than undermine one another?
Our early findings were captured in the open-access chapter AI Leadership and the Future of Corporate Governance (2019) and later expanded in the 2020 book AI Leadership for Boards: The Future of Corporate Governance. That first edition introduced a framework of board responsibilities grounded in two key roles: guidance (shaping ambition, culture, and investment) and supervision (overseeing risk, ethics, and impact).
The framework resonated widely—with directors, researchers, and policy makers alike.
Why We Wrote a New Edition
Since 2020, the landscape has changed dramatically. Generative AI can now design molecules, write code, and mimic human expression. The urgency of climate change has moved sustainability from the margins to the core of strategy. Boards are no longer asking if they need to engage—but how.
To help answer that, we built on the original framework by adding a third dimension:
AI Business Strategy, Leadership, Talent & Transformation.
This edition also deepens our focus on the intersection of AI and sustainability, highlighting how ethical deployment, responsible data use, and supply chain transformation can generate long-term competitive advantage while advancing global goals.
From Theory to Practice
In parallel, we translated these ideas into practice. Through the Boards Impact Forum, we created the training program Board Oversight of Responsible AI for Value Creation, delivered to hundreds of Nordic and international directors. We convened conversations with INSEAD’s Corporate Governance Center, MIT CISR, MIT CSAIL, and many other institutions—each reinforcing the urgent need for board-level guidance on AI.
At Chalmers University of Technology, co-author Robin Teigland and her team continued to empirically validate our hypotheses and expand the evidence base for responsible AI governance.
We are particularly grateful to the Swedish Internet Foundation, whose support enabled us to update and expand this book, and to our research and corporate partners—Combient, Advisense, and the many board directors who generously contributed to our work.
A Strategic Imperative, Not a Niche Concern
Our message is clear: Responsible AI governance is not optional—it is the strategic imperative of our time. As algorithmic power increases and sustainability constraints intensify, boards must learn to navigate this new terrain with competence, foresight, and integrity.
We hope this revised volume equips board directors and executive leaders with both the insight and the confidence to lead in this era of convergence.
AI Leadership for Boards – Enabling Responsible AI for Sustainable Value Creation
Springer, November 2025
