Closing the Deployment Gap with Experimentation Corridors

Series: This series began by introducing the Reglab: a platform for ministries, corporates, startups, xlabs, think tanks and policy units to play a proactive role in the creation of new regulations. We have since talked about the problems and the shared mindsets required of the Reglab - namely speed, scale and co-creation. I have also presented you with a working draft of the operating model, which is now being iterated on through conversations with key stakeholders. In my last post, I talked about the purpose and how the faster creation of new markets is one of the primary goals of the Reglab. Here, in the fifth instalment of the series, I hope to shine some light on designing Experimentation Corridors, a physical platform to help support the deployment of new regulation breaks. 

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There is no real shortage of moonshot ideas: no shortage of ‘cutting edge’ technology that has the potential to change the world and no shortage of people willing to bet their houses and devote the next 10 years of their lives to their visions.

Nonetheless, there is one critical shortage: the shortage of fast deployment to the real world.

This deployment gap exists because despite the wide selection of ‘tools’ we have created for innovators to build their ideas, there is a lack of ‘tools’ to help deploy them. To support the building of new ideas, the tools available are in abundance: from different funding vehicles to test cashflow challenged ideas, to cloud services that have cut the cost of launching new ventures. There are accelerators and incubators that increase the potential success rate of risky ideas, and distribution platforms that give founders faster access to customers. These tools enhance the efficiency of translating something new from the mind into a product, service, or solution.

On the other hand, to support the deployment of new ideas, we need to consciously design and deliver (more) new tools to allow innovators to test their solutions, prototypes, and hypotheses with the real world in a way that is cheaper, faster and easier than today. 

Bigger companies are able to go all over the world to test their new technology, as they have the funds to do this: Volvo went to the US to test their autonomous vehicles, and Amazon is currently testing delivery drones in Canada after “frustration with US regulations”. However, although the authority was granted by the Canadian governments for Amazon to test their creations, this still required them to purchase land in order to run their tests. Not every startup, academic organisation, or even government entity has the financial muscle to make such risky investments. Alternative ‘tools’ need to be made available that standardise real world testing. One area that could be addressed is the way we design, develop, deliver and democratise new regulations (aka Reglab). However, this is not the only ‘tool’ that is required. 

A recent conversation with a startup founder who has deployed AI-based camera detection technology explained precisely why the issue isn’t solved by regulation alone. Even when regulation breaks give the green light, different stakeholders still need a way to come together to solve the remaining problems: having the right communication infrastructure, physical infrastructure, insurance structures, and error and failure-handling frameworks. Today, each and every project is defining and navigating its own path, and as such the gap between the ‘lab’ and ‘citizen’ remains large.

Thus, we need to create tools in addition to regulation breaks. We need to create physical platforms or, as I like to call them, Experimentation Corridors, where deployment can be orchestrated more efficiently.  

The basic premise of Experimentation Corridors is not new; there are already drone corridors established by UNICEF for humanitarian causes. There are already road corridors in San Francisco for testing autonomous mobility use cases. Nonetheless, these are all single use-case corridors. We need to re-imagine Experimentation Corridors so that a network of Corridors are created for different use-cases. 

The purpose of these Experimentation Corridors, is to create a dedicated space that is:

Safe space: Experimenters need to feel safe to test systems-challenging solutions “without deploying to the whole world” (Larry Page, CEO Alphabet Inc). They need to contain the legal, financial and reputational risks to the rest of their organisations. 

Fast-learning space:  Experimenters need to be able to talk openly about failures in order to ensure learning and progress. For example, the recent drone delivery testing in Switzerland, in which the Matternet drone fell and landed within feet of children, has given everyone - from the drone manufacturer to the regulators - the knowledge they need to alter processes and further increase redundancy of fail-safe mechanisms of drones. No amount of simulation testing inside warehouses, or even risk-free testing in isolated areas, would have exposed us to the knowledge we now have on the risks in the real world. 

‘Systems-challenging’ space: These Experimentation Corridors are not just windows that allow us to visualise the future. They allow us to hear, touch and feel the future. They allow us to move beyond feasibility, and see the efficacy in terms of impact on people’s lives. 

For the potentially game-changing innovations - the new drugs, new ways of printing infrastructure, new autonomous mobility - execution becomes a real challenge when competing with and ultimately trying to reinvent the system. Creating a new system that challenges the security, stability, mindset and livelihood of the old is not easy. 

The Experimentation Corridor exists precisely for this reason: to challenge the status quo. To do this, it cannot operate in isolation. It must not avoid friction with existing systems, but rather seek this out. It must not risk mitigate but rather seek out return on risk. It must be open to unknown factors, and respond fast when things do not go according to plan. It can and must interface with the existing systems, from education to labour, from communications to airspace. 

Experimentation Corridors need to be strategically created, governed and operated. They will most likely need to exist outside the mandate of any one ministry or regulator. And, they most certainly will need a community of co-creators to deliver on their promise. In the rest of this post, I will explore two key co-creators that are needed for successful Experimentation Corridors. 

1. Cabinet-level: To elevate the Experimentation Corridors as a strategic, country-level tool, the highest decision bodies in the country need to be co-creators. They can play an active role in approving a network of Experimentation Corridors, frameworks and licenses. 
2. Network of Experimentation Corridors: Ensure that the corridors are aligned with the strategic agenda of the country. Ultimately, the Experimentation Corridors are a tool to help serve existing national strategies, they can help achieve their outcomes by making effective deployment easier and faster. 

Each Experimentation Corridor needs to contain a diverse range of constituents; this should include citizens, homes, parks, hospitals, schools, roads, airspace, governments, businesses, and academia. The corridor, regardless of whether it is 1 mile or 100 miles in size, needs to be reflective of the use-cases it is designed for. For example, autonomous mobility may require 50+ mile corridor or an AI corridor may be 1-square mile in size. 

Yet it’s not enough to merely ‘contain’ a diverse set of constituents: these constituents need to “sign up” to being early-adopters. This distribution with ready and willing constituents is critical to allow faster deployment testing. 

1. Experimentation Frameworks:  Ensure the appropriate meta-rules are created to minimise risk of harm to existing systems and people. For example, if it is testing drones, then the Experimentation Framework may detail that they can fly between 200m-400m airspace, they are to have GPS trackers, and can operate between 9am-3pm. These frameworks are best co-created with existing regulators, experimenters and experimentees. And, they should remain as draft frameworks and subject to continuous iteration. 
2. Experimentation Licenses: Ensure Experimentation Licenses are deliberately broad, detailing key areas of scope, duration and location. They should not be too limited, so as to constrain organisations applying for specific use-cases that have not been considered yet. These licenses are assigned to specific organisations by the Experimentation Growth Board (see below). Furthermore, the goal and design of the Experimentation License is not just to enter the corridor but also exit the corridor with validated assumptions and hypotheses.

Given that it is the convergence of multiple technologies that shows the promise of changing the world, it will likely be the convergence of regulations that is required to deliver on that potential. If we take drones testing as an exemplary case, the question is not regarding the safety of flying drones, because that question has already been answered from a technical perspective. The licenses needs to be more sophisticated and relevant to the modern needs of our society: for example, what happens when drones converge with AI, facial recognition and 3D printing all at once? 

In addition, to technology licenses, the Experimentation Corridors should allow for testing a diverse set of use-cases, from testing new policies, behaviour nudges, financial models, insurance models, business models, and value models. Conducting more experiments at meaningful scale will help government decision-makers, inventors, entrepreneurs, and experimenters, to not only react or interact with citizens but to develop a better society with them. 

2) Experiment Growth Board is another such co-creator. This board is largely the owner of the Experimentation Corridors, which can be incorporated as a Govup (the subject of my next post). 

1. Experiment Infrastructure: The job of the Experimentation Growth Board is to ensure the basic infrastructure is funded and created. For example, if it is an autonomous mobility focused corridor then the physical infrastructure of roads need to have the right markings and signs for both pedestrians and drivers. 
2. Experiment Business Model: The job of the Board is to ensure there is a repeatable and scalable business model. For example, for the board to charge experimenters a fixed or variable fee to operate in the corridor.
3. Experiment Support Programs: These fees can be used to help fund the ‘market-incubators’ programs, which may or may not be delivered by yet another co-creator.
4. Experiment Principles: The Experimentation Growth Board’s job is to ensure that those granted the license to operate in the Experimentation Corridor need to abide by a set of shared values. For example, signing up to an ethics code. This means making a pledge of not knowingly doing harm, agreeing to open source the data and results that come out of the testing so the learning can be scaled, and operating with user-centered design ensuring that you are not just designing for, but with the citizens.

In summary, Experimentation Corridors are a critical component of the Reglab operating model to help innovators deploy their ideas to the world in an efficient and universally beneficial way.