Innovation Monsters in the Sandbox

AbstractRecent technological advances, from artificial intelligence to genome editing, are made into innovation monsters, that is, demonstrable objects of public admiration or public fear, which do not exist without being displayed, are connected with anticipations of progress or catastrophe, and cause pervasive uncertainties about their future evolutions. In this paper, I investigate the politics of innovation monsters by analyzing recent manifestations of the regulatory sandbox. Heralded by innovation enthusiasts across the globe, many regulatory sandboxes aim to tame innovation monsters. In doing so, they also trust innovation to provide relevant answers to public problems. Other regulatory sandboxes illustrate a shift from a concern with containing risks to the imperative to realize the potential of innovation by suspending the rules suspected to restrain its progress. It feeds an understanding of policy as innovation-based. This innovation-based policy makes innovators central political actors and innovation the engine of permanently destabilized policy action.