As the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution is progressing, regulatory innovation is emphasized. In this context, negative regulation is proposed as a preferred form of regulation instead of positive regulation. However, contrary to these requests, it is not easy to apply the form of negative regulation to the entire regulatory system. There is a gap between theoretical claims and actual regulatory reality. Various reasons can be considered for this. One of them is that there are limits to solving many regulatory problems that arise in modern society through negative regulations alone. This shows that there are reasons why many positive regulations could be found in the regulatory area. In this context, this article examines the meaning of positive and negative regulation and then handles the theoretical and historical backgrounds of these forms of regulation. This article argues that there are many reasons why the form of positive regulation is expanding in place of negative regulation today. Accordingly, this article argues that it is not valid to understand positive and negative regulation as a dichotomy of ‘regulation <-> innovation’. This article argues that what we need is to explore regulatory measures that can support social innovation on the one hand while taking modern society’s complexity into account on the other hand.