Overview

This science for policy brief provides an overview of the ways in which experimentation spaces can support regulatory decision-making and learning. It discusses the joint value that the actors involved in innovation creation, adoption, and governance – innovators, citizens, and regulators – may derive from collaboration within different experimentation spaces, such as test beds, living labs, and regulatory sandboxes. It concludes with recommendations for EU innovation policy to improve understanding of existing practices and to foster the uptake of responsible experimentation.

Highlights

• Test beds, living labs, and regulatory sandboxes are experimentation spaces that can generate evidence and learning useful to support innovation and regulatory governance
• Each type of experimentation space has its set of distinctive features that all for different forms of stakeholder engagement and can support different types of regulatory learning
• Experimentation spaces need to strike a balance between supporting the development of innovations and mitigating any related risks on the market, the public, and the environment.
• More evidence of experimentation practices and their impact is needed to foster their development, scale-up and replication by stakeholders in innovation ecosystems.

How to cite this document

Kert, K., Vebrova, M. and Schade, S., Regulatory learning in experimentation spaces, European Commission, 2022, JRC130458.