Translating ahead, translating again, translating across: Unlocking the value of academic board advisors

Organisations constantly seek a strategic competitive advantage, while academics seek to make a greater impact in industry. To address these issues, this paper advocates including academics as board advisors and introduces a framework to understand and unlock the value of an academic advisor. Conceptualised based on a reflexive interrogation of the author's perspectives and experience as an academic and board advisor to a commercial entity, with triangulation against the management and service management literature, the framework of translating ahead, translating again, and translating across can be used to optimise board performance and collaboration between practitioners and academics serving on boards. The paper further highlights the application and benefits of these capabilities from the perspective of an academic advisor in the tropics and advances a holistic and systematic understanding of tropical development. Although this paper is based on the perspective of a single academic appointed as a board advisor in the hospitality sector, the framework introduced further bridges the academia–practitioner gap and enables academics to add more value at the strategic level in organisations. Practitioners can also use the insights of this paper to better understand and assess the value of academic board advisors.