Blue Board Leadership Programme Launched to Meet Global Challenges

[By: CBS Board]

Top management education leaders have announced a strongly resourced initiative to help equip present and future members of maritime industry boards master the turbulence and societal risks confronting their businesses.

The Blue Board Leadership Programme will combine world-renowned expertise within the CBS Board Leadership Programme and the Blue MBA Alumni Association, which represents successful participants over the past 20 years in the Executive MBA in Shipping & Logistics (the Blue MBA).

The collaboration is setting out to prepare present and future ‘blue’ board members to meet ever-rising demands and expectations in an atmosphere of increasing complexity, unpredictability, and volatility, alongside areas such as risk management and the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) agenda.

A statement from the Blue Board Leadership Programme underlines: “The global maritime industry is undergoing dramatic changes in the areas of digitalisation, cyber risks, and security; de-carbonisation is transforming the industry and international regulations are imposing new rules of the game. All of these are topics which ‘blue’ boards need to be able to navigate skilfully.”

CBS Board Education CEO, Tom Jacobsgaard, says: “We are proud to work with Blue MBA Alumni Association and Irene Rosberg on developing The Blue Board Leadership Program. Our focus is on value creation for corporations in the Global Maritime Industry, for shareholders, stakeholders, and society at large. With this new initiative, we will provide knowledge and learnings on best practice board work and corporate governance, and how to address the overall challenges to re-invent purpose, strategy, risk governance and business practice in the era of climate change, sustainable finance, digitization and geopolitical developments and the new world order of globalization in the wake of COVID-19 and the devastating Russian war on Ukraine.”

Blue MBA Alumni Association chief executive, Irene Rosberg, says: “The Blue Board Leadership Programme has as its starting point the requirements of the maritime industry, including its many and varied service providers, for board leadership that has a wide and up-to-the-minute variety of skills and abilities at its fingertips. If ever there were an industry whose members need a global and holistic strategy to survive, it is maritime.”

It is this holistic focus on interactions across a business and its strategic operations, which gives companies an advantage in growing faster, increasing yields, and realising market opportunities, it is argued. Underpinning this, it is essential for ‘blue’ board members to gain knowledge about the corporate governance system, value creation, company law, and board dynamics to name just a few.

The Blue Board Leadership Programme will endeavour to set the bar high, offering a robust board leadership training programme based on the reputed CBS Board Leadership Education programmes; be anchored in, be relevant to and add value to the global maritime segment and its needs; incorporate sound principles and best practice for executive board membership, stewardship, and governance through case studies; and showcase examples of high-performance boards operating in key global governance regimes.

It will seek to show how boards can navigate accelerated change, the growing ESG agenda and increased complexity within the global ambit of the sector; discuss examples of business success and learning from failures, how to mitigate risk, and how to maximise business opportunities, growth, and shareholder value through strategic board involvement.

In developing the programme, CBS Board Leadership Education and the Blue MBA Alumni Association have partnered with distinguished professors from Copenhagen Business School and other international universities and business schools, members of company boards, and partners from Ernst & Young (in relation to annual reports and finance issues) and the law firm Kromann Reumert (on legal issues).

Led by a world-class faculty of some 25 experienced professors, board leaders and advisors and industry experts, participants will work on industry-relevant cases during eight days, focusing on the most important issues and dilemmas faced by directors and board members of global maritime and logistics companies. There will be breakout discussions in which groups of participants act as boards of directors, whose decisions will be summarised and challenged by the faculty team in classroom discussion.

The faculty team will be, among others:

Copenhagen Business School professors Steen Thomsen, Andreas Rasche, Jan Damsgaard, Ken Bechmann, Thomas Plenborg, and Thomas Ritter; Bo Cerup Simonsen, Denmark-based board chairman; Eivind Kolding, Denmark-based board chairman; Birgit Aagaard-Svendsen, Denmark-based board chairman; Jim Hagemann Snabe, EU-based board chairman; Tommy Thomsen, Denmark and Singapore-based board chairman; Thomas Thune Andersen, Denmark-based board chairman; Andreas Sohmen-Pao, Singapore-based board chairman; Tom Jacobsgaard, CEO, CBS Board Leadership Programs; and others.

The Blue Board Leadership Programme will be in two modules. Module 1 will be from December 5-8, 2022, and module 2 from January 31-February 3, 2023, at Copenhagen Business School, CBS Board Education, Porcelaenshaven 22, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark. The programme is in English to accommodate international participants.