Transformative innovation and shifting balance: How boards can track stakeholder momentum

The old pattern was simple: invent first, then build the world around it later. Airplanes needed airports, pilots, safety rules and public trust before flying became routine. Now the sequence is collapsing. New technologies are being built, financed, fought over and regulated at the same time, and that makes governance a lot messier.

The clearest examples right now are data centers and prediction markets. Data centers are drawing investment, jobs and claims about competitiveness, but they are also running into organized pushback over electricity, water, noise, land use and local impact. In Virginia, a Washington Post-Schar School poll in late March found only 35% of voters would be comfortable with a new data center in their community, down from 69% in 2023. In Prince William County, opposition to a proposed development near Manassas National Battlefield turned into years of litigation before a Virginia appeals court threw out the county’s rezoning approvals on procedural grounds. The county stopped defending them, and the developer dropped its appeal.

Prediction markets are moving under a different kind of uncertainty. Their growth has outpaced the legal answer to a basic question: are sports-event contracts federally regulated derivatives, state gambling, or both? Earlier this month, New Jersey asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review an appellate ruling that favored federal jurisdiction over sports-related event contracts. Other courts have gone the other way. So the market keeps expanding while the rulebook is still being written.

That is the board problem Jane Sadowsky is really pointing at. The question is no longer just whether a product works or customers want it. Boards need to watch which stakeholders are gaining traction, which groups are starting to reinforce each other, and when a local complaint could become a broader political or regulatory problem. A snapshot is not enough when the ground itself is moving.

And the harder part is that stakeholders do not always argue about the same unit of value. A company can put dollars on investment, jobs and taxes. Residents may care more about water or noise. Investors may see upside where communities see strain. Once those values stop sharing a common scale, the board is no longer balancing neat trade-offs. It is managing a fight over what counts as progress at all.