Read this very interesting article: “How Google is slowing innovation” by Aytekin Tank https://link.medium.com/e4EYifNJNR
One lesson is that auditors should not shy from pressing management on strategic risks.
I recently wrote an article about blockchain and its implications for the audit profession. Interestingly Google and other social media giants should be thought of as also being in the cross hair of the blockchain technology. Google’s quest to execute the Microsoft’s strategy: embrace, expand, extinguish has led them to try to stop innovation or to be an innovation bottleneck. Here is how I summarize Google’s rather potent strategy:
- Embrace the internet (give things for free e.g. email accounts, search)
- Expand (develop and market our data using surveillance methodologies and analytics – the worrisome part)
- Extinguish (the internet’s traffic is now going through google, including by the way our brains as we “google everything”)
But again, for fellow auditors, perhaps there is also an important lesson to draw. Strategy and its execution remain the most important factors to examine. Many of us focus on financial risks and in fact others constraint us to think and work mostly on financial risks and in the “numbers realm”.
Its the strategic risks and its management (e.g. Social distrust of Google’s slick intermediation role) that we should train our attention to. More precisely, we should challenge management to have more robust risk identification and mitigation efforts. We are uniquely qualified to do so because of our mandate to be independent and objective. The risks with google and its good old “bait and switch” approach remains the enormous potential backlash (privacy concerns, power concentration, mistrust).
Bait and switch is not another phrase for innovation
Do you think auditors are focusing enough on strategic risks? Do auditors have the capacity to do so in a credible way? Do auditors have the mandate? How can auditors become better at it – what will it take? Your thoughts?
Nonprofit Auditor 
This is a very interesting subject. Would have appreciated some elements of response
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I very much agree Chavenet – thank you. I find that without a big picture understanding of strategy, “helping” from the second or third line of defense, as compliance and audit professionals do is as good as aiming in the dark.
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