Technology top of mind with NZ bosses

This year’s New Zealand Herald Mood of the Boardroom survey shows technology dominates business leaders’ thinking.

When asked “what factors will have the most impact on business over the next five years, two-thirds of bosses nominated technological advances. Nothing else came even close.

You can interpret the question as good or bad depending on whether your business is the disruptor or the disrupted.

In comparison, online security is unequivocal. New Zealand’s bosses named it as their number one concern.

Online security has been bubbling under the surface as an issue in recent years.

In this year’s New Zealand Herald Mood of the Boardroom survey, the nation’s bosses placed it first in a list of 16 possible concerns. And by a long way.

The Mood of the Boardroom team asked ore than 100 New Zealand business leaders to rate items on this list out of ten. A score of one meant there was no concern, a score of ten ranks as extreme concern. Cybersecurity scored 7.16.

Many leaders ranked online security at either nine or ten. It came in a lot higher than the next most pressing concern; the result of the US presidential election.

If the survey was held this week, it may have ranked even higher. Most CEOs filled out their survey responses before the news of the Yahoo email breach was public

Another ugly side of technology change came up in the question about multinational tax avoidance.

While there have always been worries about transfer pricing and other was of minimising taxes, technology companies like Google, Apple and Facebook take it to new extremes. They pay next to no tax in New Zealand because they claim transactions here actually take place elsewhere.