Shaping what comes next: priorities for regulators and chief executive officers4 Designing regulation and innovation as one system will define competitiveness in the next decade. Capabilities for regulators and chief executive officers to design for uncertainty FIGURE 4 Source: Boston Consulting Group (BCG); World Economic Forum.Regulators: three core capabilities Foresight Anticipate how technologies will reshape markets and risks. Translate early insights and pilot results into clear regulatory direction. Prepare teams, data systems and oversight methods to evolve ahead of innovation. Technical depth Design and interrogate complex systems with policy, data and engineering fluency. Create outcome-based rules that adapt as technologies mature. Build integrated tools and skills that connect supervision with real-world performance. Engagement Act as a market convener, bringing innovators, academia and civil society into shared test environments. Turn collaboration into open evidence that informs rule design. Build legitimacy through transparent communication and continuous learning. Chief executive officers: five takeaways Read the regulatory path early. Engage early to understand whether the market faces adaptation, redesign, or convergence. Shape timing and investment around where regulation is going, not where it is. Build trust as a product feature. Design transparency, auditability and traceability directly into systems. Treat verifiable integrity as core infrastructure, not compliance overhead. Shape standards through collaboration. Participate in sandboxes, pilots and working groups to set practical norms. Influence the standards others will later have to follow. Differentiate above the rails. As open standards, shared data platforms and public digital rails become common infrastructure, compete on insight and reliability. Deliver value through superior user experience, analytics and verifiable protection. Design compliance for scale. Build modular controls and shared data models that adapt across jurisdictions. Configure locally without rebuilding regulations each time. The Regulatory Frontier: Designing the Rules that Shape Innovation 16

The Regulatory Frontier Designing the Rules that Shape Innovation 2025