Regulatory agencies as innovation enablers: a conceptualization

Abstract Regulatory agencies are usually tasked with a dual mission of assessing the benefits and risks posed by products reaching the market, and ensuring the competitiveness of the industries they oversee. Although literature usually presents regulators as agents hampering innovation, that is not always the case. The purpose of this paper is to discuss, under which conditions, and why, regulatory agencies may enable innovation. I propose a conceptual framework to connect the literatures on regulatory processes and innovation processes. Based on this framework, I analyse three connections between the innovation and regulatory processes, which create opportunities for agencies’ innovation intermediation. I provide real-life examples of three different mechanisms through which such intermediation may take place, and propose four modes of intermediation which are characteristic of regulatory agencies.