Noor, Nurhafihz (2026) Translating ahead, translating again, translating across: Unlocking the value of academic board advisors. Journal of Tropical Futures. (In Press)

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Abstract

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.

Item ID:	94448
Item Type:	Article (Editorial)
ISSN:	2753-8931
Keywords:	board of advisors, academic board advisor, board diversity, governance, management, academia–practitioner gap
Copyright Information:	© The Author(s) 2026. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Date Deposited:	20 Oct 2026 04:28
FoR Codes:	35 COMMERCE, MANAGEMENT, TOURISM AND SERVICES > 3507 Strategy, management and organisational behaviour > 350701 Corporate governance @ 100%
SEO Codes:	28 EXPANDING KNOWLEDGE > 2801 Expanding knowledge > 280106 Expanding knowledge in commerce, management, tourism and services @ 100%
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