#Blockchain4EU stands out in its innovative support to policy-making due to:

1. Combination of traditional primary and secondary research with experimental and transdisciplinary methods, which opens up often constrained field of possibilities for outputs in evidence-based policy advice in EU institutions;
2. Promotion of participatory and anticipation policy cultures, which counters late engagement with smaller pools of relevant or affected parties, and standard 'wait-and-see' attitudes when faced with early-stage technologies;
3. Focus on collaborative activities to engage internal and external stakeholders, which allowed exploration of wider collective visions considering policy, economic, social, legal and environmental dimensions;
4. Use of speculative design and prototyping for policy, in particular the co-creation of tangible fictional artefacts or materially grounded outputs, which act as catalysts for triggering discussions aimed at enhanced forward-looking decision making.

#Blockchain4EU outputs (prototypes as main triggers) are now being presented via several channels. The team is conducting strong engagement and follow-ups not only with Commission services and other EU institutions, but also with external stakeholders from industry and SMEs to research and CSOs.

Key recommendations and insights are being taken specifically by DG GROW for upcoming policy initiatives. This includes potential funding in the next EU Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF). DG GROW is also defining possible policy developments in selected sectors grounded on the project's collaborative vision building.

New explorations at the intersection of policy, industry and businesses are previewed with the same experimental frame. As a spin-off, the EU Policy Lab in collaboration with DG CNECT and with the support of the European Parliament, is leading a pilot project on the co-creation of a European ecosystem of organisations working on DLTs for social and public good.

#Blockchain4EU was led by JRC's EU Policy Lab with DG GROW support. A Community of Practice of around 100 participants from Commission services was created and managed via an online platform and multilateral face-to-face meetings, offering constant feedback and channels for exploitation of outputs. The project also benefited from collaborations with supranational institutions as the European Parliament via its Science and Technology Options Assessment Panel, or UNDP via its Innovation Facility.

Through co-creation and research activities, the project engaged a community of more than 250 external stakeholders working or interested in Blockchain including: companies, entrepreneurs, and labour representatives; technical experts, developers and designers; social, economic and legal researchers; CSOs and think-tanks; and public administration at city, regional, national and supranational levels. Secondary outreach also privileged this community and their potential use of outputs.

#Blockchain4EU presented its outputs at a high-level event in Commission's headquarters (May 2018), followed by internal session at European Political Strategy Centre (EPSC), Commission's in-house think tank (June 2018).

At Commission level, insights were already applied in H2020 Call ‘Blockchain and DLTs for SMEs’ to promote financial support to SMEs for application development. Also, the Communication 'A balanced IP enforcement system responding to today's societal challenges' recognised the project's outputs for policy analysis on how Blockchain can strengthen Supply Chains transparency and IPR protection.

At the European Parliament level, the resolution 'DLTs and Blockchains: Building Trust with Disintermediation' acknowledged the value of #Blockchain4EU as foresight framework to assess potential opportunities and challenges of Blockchain in support of decision makers.

Future policy exploitation of results is now being planned at EU level on Trade and Advanced Manufacturing.

Continuous stakeholder engagement was often challenging over differences in availability and goals. Tailored communication with distinct parties and management of expectations was crucial. In addition community building through platforms as Slack or Linkedin was not entirely successful on similar grounds, being later replaced by multilateral emails, blogposts and social media dissemination.

Co-creating with a diverse set of stakeholders also required added efforts, frequently due to variances in terminology/frameworks, professional/disciplinary expertise and/or organisational backgrounds. A robust participatory framework with sound collaborative techniques was key to minimize friction and achieve shared ownership.

The project attempted to embrace diversity in gender, geographies, and institutional representativeness, which proved difficult in a highly technological context. Attaining balance required additional time and preparation, particularly in selecting stakeholders for events.

Multi-stakeholder engagement is key at every step. We need, however, to create places where stakeholders are not only central, but where their inputs are effectively absorbed. Achieving this requires a transparent implementation of tested participatory approaches, which in turn need adequate resource allocation, time and planning. Moreover, choosing the best methods for the task at hand is critical. Mixing and adapting existing tools may work better for engaging than pushing new experimentation at all costs.

Policy Labs as ours stand out as connectors between private, public and hybrid actors, able to aggregate diverse insights and goals for outputs suited to the success of projects as #Blockchain4EU. Bringing stakeholders in and setting up external partnerships stimulates wider impact. Even so, it's crucial to encourage cross fertilisation, adoption of experimental methods, and capacity building in internal services so they can incorporate the broader inputs of such projects.

The EU Policy Lab experimental and transdisciplinary approach in support to policy, and particularly #Blockchain4EU combination of science and technology studies, foresight and horizon scanning, and generative and speculative design, could be replicated in other policy contexts when looking at potential developments of early-stage technologies.

At a practical level, all prototypes and respective design and coding elements were made available by the EU Policy Lab to the general public, under EU Public Licence (EUPL), and where not applicable, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).

As a direct follow-up, engaged start-ups Ideas for Change and Materiom are already taking forward developments of prototypes 'Care AI' and 'Vantage Point', within their strategies for better data sharing and decentralization with focus on citizens, SMEs, and public administration.

#Blockchain4EU was able to push the frontiers of what's common practice in policy when looking into early-stage technologies. The project showcased how a multi-stakeholder approach in an evidence-based framework can benefit policy making through processes that are simultaneously robust and experimental in their delivery and impact. Key lessons learned:

1. An anticipatory and forward-looking approach is a demanding exercise for many internal and external stakeholders. From developers and entrepreneurs, to business representatives and policy-makers, most of their time is spent dealing with immediate tasks and operations. However, the use of transdisciplinary futures and foresight methods, ranging from future vision building to co-creation of physical prototypes, can foster the right mind-set.
2. Collaborative environments in which stakeholders are able to work together with different backgrounds and experiences are crucial. A sound planning and execution of a participatory approach needs to be in place from start to end throughout all stages of a project. A multi-stakeholder process relies on enough time and resources for iterations in order to test preliminary outcomes and produce final outputs.
3. The use of speculative design and prototyping is valuable in a policy context to trigger wider discussions with the purpose of improving forward-looking decision making. Moreover, co-creating tangible fictional artefacts with a diverse set of stakeholders provides wide-ranging future visions that cover at the same time policy, economic, social, legal and environmental dimensions.
4. Evidence-based framework for policy advice can benefit from a modular approach for outputs, that is, designing and tailoring key processes and results to different parties. An effective communication can include not only standard written outputs such as reports, but also physical prototypes and multimedia materials for exhibition and interaction (see videos and additional materials).

The project was coordinated at the Joint Research Centre (JRC) EU Policy Lab by Susana Nascimento, Alexandre Pólvora and Joana Sousa Lourenço.

JRC is the European Commission’s in-house science and knowledge service, with a mandate to provide EU policies with independent, evidence based scientific and technical support throughout the whole policy cycle. It aims to anticipate emerging issues that need to be addressed at EU level and understand its policy contexts; creates, manages and makes sense of knowledge; and develops innovative tools to make such knowledge available and useful for policy making.

The JRC's EU Policy Lab / Foresight, Behavioural Insights and Design for Policy Unit encompasses both an innovative way of conducting research, and a collaborative and experimental space that makes use of a wide transdisciplinary toolbox to envision, connect and prototype solutions for better policies, with strong focus on citizen-centric frameworks and stakeholder engagement.